Former Technorati CEO David Sifry said the company has unmade these unpopular changes:

First off, doing a search now brings up a full list of posts, not just a select list of the top 3 tagged posts. We still default you to tagged posts (they’re often more relevant than just keyword matches), but you can easily toggle between tags and full keyword information.

We also brought back the authority filter and the charts, and you can see them on the right hand side of the page. And yes Virginia, you can now easily set your default filter to whatever you like, and it is sticky between sessions (as long as you’re on the same computer, of course).

During Technorati’s move to a stronger colocation facility to host the site, their performance suffered and frustrated users. Sifry said the move has been completed, giving Technorati much better stability and performance.

“Teresa Malo, CFO, Dorion Carroll our Vice President of Engineering and Derek Gordon, our Vice President of Marketing, will operate as a committee of the Office of the President, jointly focused on the day-to-day management of Technorati and achieving some important, very strategic milestones,” Sifry said on his blog.

He wasn’t the only one to lose a job at Technorati. Sifry noted the firing of eight people as part of adjusting their expense structure.

“Undertaking this action was gut wrenching – all our team members are greatly valued – but was necessary to ensure the ongoing success and growth of Technorati,” he said.

The personnel changes may not be enough to maintain Technorati’s relevance. Google launched a blog search engine that works as well as its signature search product. Technorati has experienced maddening technical problems at times throughout its existence, with a variety of issues.

Sifry Seeks Technorati CEO Replacement

The twist is that Sifry’s ideal candidate will replace Sifry himself. In a blog post today, Sifry explained what he will do once a strong CEO candidate comes in to take the reins:

I adore the company I created – after my family, it’s my proudest achievement, and I have no intention of leaving. Like other founders of some of our best-known and legendary technology companies, I intend to play a vital, ongoing role here at Technorati. If anything, I expect to resume a more active role in product development, driving innovation, and listening hard to our users while giving them the best service in the business. Maybe even get in a bit of coding every now and then.

Among the background Sifry wants to find in a candidate would be experience in leading an IPO. That suggests an ultimate goal for the site, through either a public offering or being acquired by someone else.

But who? There are a few little negative points an incoming CEO better be ready to address, or at least have enough confidence in his golden parachute to take up the challenge. First among them would be Google, with its Blog Search and its regular indexing of blog content. Fighting Google at search looks like a fool’s errand.

Another would be the upheaval Technorati has seen among its personnel, several of whom have departed over the past year. Anyone can pluck a Schmidt from a Novell; finding a Brin and Page is the real trick, and the new CEO may have to accomplish that feat.

If acquisition is the goal, the question is who will do the buying? Google can probably be ruled out. Yahoo has had blog search in the past, but phased it out. Microsoft could do it, but one can almost imagine them wanting to do this in-house.

IAC’s Ask has blog search already, as part of its services. AOL enters the conversation here, and they look like an interesting choice. Technorati’s concepts seem to fit what AOL wants to do with its web-first approach to social media; the technology could be another story.

Then there’s News Corp, and its Fox Interactive Media portfolio with MySpace and other sites. Could Technorati complement MySpace and its numerous profiles? Would it even fit in with Fox’s properties?

Whoever Sifry finds should be a skillful fundraiser and an adept motivator of engineering talent (unless they go the outsourcing route). Technorati could be a lot better in terms of downtime and blog post indexing, as many bloggers have observed.

Taking care of those little things, along with a ruthless Steve Jobs-like focus on a vision for Technorati, should be qualities Technorati looks for in an aspiring CEO candidate.

Blogs Continue To Grow By Leaps And Bounds

Blogs have removed the coding step that was once needed in between creating content and posting content by doing all the work behind the scenes. According to Sifry’s report, 35.3 million blogs demonstrated that more people are using the blog medium to craft content and publish it.

“The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago,” Sifry wrote. As of April 2006, people created 75,000 blogs each day, with a new one arriving online about every second.

Many bloggers end up despising the process of updating their blogs, and quit doing so. Sifry found that 11 percent of blogs get updated at least weekly, if not more often. That would have over 31 million blogs seemingly abandoned by their creators. But about 55 percent of blogs still have their creators posting three months after launching a blog.

Another discouraging number shows 9 percent of new blogs created are spam blogs. 60 percent of the pings that nit Technorati come from spam sources, requiring the site to block them. “The high level of interesting, original content being created greatly outweighs the fake or duplicate content listed on splogs,” Sifry wrote.

Posting volume to blogs has hit about 1.2 million a day. Sifry noted how posts spike in relation to world events, the most recent spikes being President Bush’s State of the Union address and the Super Bowl. The love of tech exceeds even sports and politics in the blogosphere, according to Sifry:

—

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | PreFound.com

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.