According to sources familiar with the matter, the company is also expected to announce that it has closed a new round of funding, continuing the backing of Rob Hayes of Omidyar Network, Japanese search partner Mitsui, as well as a new Chinese partner. Added to the list of investors is former Google employee Aydin Senkut, who was once in charge of Google’s strategic syndication business in the Asia-Pacific region.

Redlitz denied rumors of layoffs and struggles within the company citing the new funding the company had procured and Feedster’s aggressive maneuvering into the Asian market. He implied that the company’s recent off-shoring and restructuring may have been confused with downsizing and financial troubles.

“Feedster has changed the structure of the organization to include an Australian development team. This is a group that came in with Brent Whitney, the VP of engineering,” he said. “Brent has a great background in building scalable systems and using outsourced talent.”

A source familiar with the Feedster’s restructuring told WebProNews that Whitney’s Australian recruits were part of a small team with PhD pedigrees brought in to work “on the spam problem.” The source also said that because of competition in the United States, and especially around Silicon Valley, Feedster was forced to look abroad for talent.

” There are some pretty sexy search companies in our neighborhood and it’s difficult to recruit,” said the source. Google especially has had a reputation for attracting the top talent in the industry, luring them even away from Microsoft.

Redlitz did not disclose the name of the startup company he would join, but indicated that it would be in the realm of media and advertising, which matches his background.

” I have been with the company two years, and brought in new talent to carry through with the original vision of quality search and syndication,” he said.

“I continually seek new opportunities around media and advertising, and the new company that I am joining is on the forefront of both. This is part of Silicon Valley and the start up environment. Change is constant.”

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Who serves your blog search needs best: Feedster or one of its many competitors? Tell us who measures up at SyndicationPro.

Announcement of the Japanese launch is expected to come within the next few weeks. Redlitz said the Feedster team is working with some of the more intricate nuances of Japanese characters. In Japan there are three separate written forms of the language. Two of them are phonetic alphabets of 46 sound symbols, all based on an older system of Chinese script known as Kanji, which holds thousands of characters.

The difficulty can lie in how those three written forms are commonly mixed and building an engine that reads it correctly. Those difficulties in translation however will aid the company when it decides to move into the Chinese market, which uses many of the same characters.

Reditz told WebProNews moving business operations into China will be a difficult chore, but a necessary one as China has “one of the fastest growing markets with user-generated content.” The first requirement to move into China, said Redlitz, is to set up a data center in the country.

When asked about other search engines’ (like Google) troubles in China over censorship, Redlitz agreed that there are drawbacks to doing business in the communist nation, but Feedster would have to abide by Chinese law.

In addition to that news, Feedster is also working on a ranking system similar to Google’s PageRank system. Redlitz said the Feedster team would be fine tuning it over the next 120 days.

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As Feedster was late getting into the game due to server upgrades, they nearly missed their chance. Two days after the brrreeeport test, though, Technorati’s Dave Sifry didn’t miss a beat posting his search engine’s results score up against Google’s Blog Search.

“So I just wanted to keep y’all updated. Technorati: 422. Google Blog Search: 337,” wrote Sifry.

As Scoble had unintentionally directed everyone to Technorati while Feedster was sleeping, nobody really paid attention to how the recently controversial Feedster measured up (well, one guy mentioned it).

Feedster’s Alan Graham joined the horn-tooting, complete with screen shots and slide show that put Technorati way behind Google and both relatively far behind Feedster.

Graham’s final score (there were two) on February 18th: Feedster: 921; Google: 623; Technorati: 200 (reduced from 970).

“Yes, I’ve knocked Technorati down to 200,” writes Graham. “Although they state they have 970 posts, I can’t view beyond 200 results. If I can’t count them, I can’twellcount them.”

Yahoo, whose employee blogger Jeremy Zawadony coincidentally had predicted Feedster’s death in 2006, reported an abysmal 80 returns for brrreeeport, according to Graham.

Graham also gives a nice tutorial on duplicate results, result number fluctuations, servers and queries in his initial report. As of today, in the initial results, Feedster still reports more finds. Today’s score: Feedster: 1,455; Technorati: 1,178; Google: 893.

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Scoble’s snarky experiment was in response to the notion of the supposed Blog Club, where A-list bloggers only link to each other and thereby keeping lesser-known bloggers out of the loop of recognition in typical Critical Theory style.

The invention of the word “brrreeeport” and the invitation to put on a person’s blog created a vacuum to Technorati’s blog listings and popular tags. Very soon, the term was listed at the top of Technorati’s most searched word. Two days later, “brrreeeport” is out ranking searches for information on the Dick Cheney hunting accident, and is third on the list of tags.

The original purpose of the experiment worked. Technorati returns some 487 results for the word, leading searchers to blogs they may have never encountered. But the memetic results led to another exploration of the efficacy of various search engines.

At the time this article was written, a search on Technorati returns 487 results; Google’s Blog Search: 452; Feedster: 569. On that information alone, it would appear that Google Blog search is missing an element the other blog engines aren’t. But the more interesting question Scoble brings up on Wednesday, when he compares results of Google, MSN, and Yahoo!

Google’s Google+Search” class=”bluelink”>main page (as of present) says it found 22,400 results for the word. Scrolling through, however, there are only 353 results after similar entries are omitted. Re-searching with omitted results included returns only 979 results, as the other 21,000 are apparently inaccessible.

Scoble calls this an example of “lies that are going on on search engines.” Scoble reports that MSN returns over 1, 369 entries (though my results continue to say 221), and Yahoo! returns over 1,010. The varying numbers does bring up an interesting question as to the veracity of any given search engine’s reach.

One thing’s for certain, many are taking advantage of the memetic appeal of the word, “brrreeeport.” Bloggers have committed to throwing the word onto their blog posts. Even the famous New York City gay and lesbian publication The Village Voice has thrown it into a headline for an unrelated music review.

There are even sponsored links for the word on Google and Yahoo!’s SERPs. On Yahoo!’s system though, it’s not the exact word, but ads served up based on similar keywords.

Whatever the deeper implications, the immediate benefit was for Z-list bloggers who otherwise may have never been found. Someone’s even reserved the brrreeeport domain.

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2006 will the year in which the once great Slashdot dies.

There’s little question that Digg is one of the most likely candidates to take the lead from Slashdot. The numbers seem to bear that out. But what’s more interesting to me is why Slashdot is on its way out.

Community Participation and Judgment

There’s always been a sense of frustration among those who submit news to Slashdot. Sometimes your story is picked and sometimes it isn’t. After a while, you start to wonder why Slashdot’s small group of dictators (err, I mean “editors”) are qualified to decide what’s interesting news.

Haven’t we figured out that the crowd is generally smarter than any one individual in the crowd?

Sites like Digg and Reddit understand that. Even the popular page on del.icio.us provides a more useful insight into the collective mind of a small but active piece of the web. The only difference is that del.icio.us doesn’t facilitate discussion. Both Digg and Reddit allow users to comment on any URL that’s been posted.

For whatever reason, some people still think that Slashdot is a blog. I think of it as a message board in which only a small group of the members have the privileges required to create new posts.

It’s interesting to note that Kuro5hin opened the editorial queue to their users for voting and comments but it never quite took off in the same way. I drifted away from the site a couple years ago, but suspect that it’s a matter of focus. K5 has always placed more of an emphasis on writing, personal stories, and politics rather than what’s hot now, spreading links or memes, and Google worship.

The Generation Gap

Let’s face it. The Slashdot guys are getting old (just as I am!). But the core audience that fuels Slashdot has always been a fairly young crowd. Reading the comments now and then provides a window into who the regular contributors are:

I know that’s quite a generalization, but it’s hard to deny that Slashdot would be anything without the core group of young geeks with more time than money. Every year that goes by is another year in the age gap between that group and the Slashdot editors.

Chad and I were discussing generation gaps in the Internet technologies world recently and decided that generations are roughly 7 years. We both agreed that it’s going to be increasingly hard for Slashdot to stay relevant in the face of younger, more open services like Digg and Reddit.

Sure, they can find and promote some young new editors to introduce “new blood” into the process. But that’s not the same. It’s still Slashdot. The site has a voice, the community has a reputation, and the entire code base was written to support them. That stuff is hard to change.

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

I have no idea if it’s related to the recent departure of Scott Rafer (former CEO) and Scott Johnson (former co-founder), but I’m amazed at how bad it is. And I should know. I’ve been a Feedster user from the first day it was announced, back when it was called “Roogle.”

Ever since then, I’ve had a few Feedster keyword search subscriptions in my aggregator so I’d know when bloggers wrote about something I’m interested in: my name, my company, my favorite technology, etc. And for quite a while now the results have been abysmal. They’ve often been broken chunks of HTML from seemingly random blog posts that are months (or years!) old, and more than half are content scraping spam blogs.

About the only thing it’s been useful for is finding the latest spam blogs to begin stealing my content. Technorati used to have that distinction but they’ve done an excellent job of cleaning up the spam.

Over a year ago a friend of mine got a job at Feedster. (I had introduced him to Scott.) Not long after that, we were driving up to San Francisco when I asked him a question. It went something like this:

What do you think Feedster’s window of opportunity is? 6 months? 12? 18? They’re clearly in a race to establish themselves in the market, carve out their space, and compete with Technorati before the Big Three build blog/rss search.

He hadn’t really thought about it. I encouraged him to do so mainly because I think it’s easy to get caught up in the fun and excitement of building while things are actually crumbling around you and your company is steadily loosing ground.

He wisely left Feedster in the middle of last year.

A lot of folks have been making predictions for 2006. Here is the first of mine: by the end of 2006, Feedster will be dead and buried. Technorati, on the other hand, will be just fine.

Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

As seemingly damning as that information is, Redlitz insists there were no philosophical differences, political battles, or dramatic conflict around Johnson’s departure.

“There’s been a lot of banter back and forth. Changes like this are not infrequent for companies in Silicon Valley. A decision was made by me and the board and it was the right decision. There was nothing contentious,” said Redlitz.

Redlitz calls the change part of Feedster’s “natural evolution.” As president, he says, it is his responsibility to make sure the right team is in place as the company moves forward.

“We need to have people that work in lockstep. There’s no particular disagreement.,” he said.

The right team Redlitz spoke of apparently could not include star coder, co-founder of the company, holder of over 500,000 shares, and successful entrepreneur Johnson, who just a week before appeared at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago speaking passionately about the direction of the company.

Even though Redlitz admits Johsnon had a “great idea that turned into a great business,” the company’s future would not involve Johsnon as a board member, not even as an employee.

“Growth is painful for some. This is just part of going forward,” said Redlitz.

Despite what that might say about the relationship between Redlitz and Johnson, Redlitz says denying Johnson a future with a company he began is “not a criminalization of Scott Johnson.”

Not a criminalization, but the situation does seem ripe for contention. It is difficult to imagine that a co-founder would take kindly to being removed from his own company during his absence.

But Feedster spokesman, George Simpson, told WebProNews, “there wasn’t any sort drama attached to it.”

This is a much different take on the matter than what was reported on the blog of Technorati’s Niall Kennedy.

“I can tell you this was not of [Johnson's] will or a pleasant processI think once some dagger wounds heal Scott will be much happier on his next project,” writes Kennedy.

Despite the reported dagger wounds, Redlitz maintains there was nothing contentious and he hopes to resolve the situation “amicably.”

As to why a change to the board of directors of the company wasn’t announced, Redlitz said, “we did not make an announcement because we didn’t feel it was appropriate to make that announcement.”

Simpson concurs, “the simple truth is I wasn’t asked to write [a press release].”

Johnson continues to have no comment on the situation and is moving on to his next project, Ookles.com.

No wonder Scott Johnson left Feedster. Do you use them anymore? Today T’Rati rolled out a bunch of new features including live, updated charts on what people are saying, improved extracts, enhanced profile information, tag maps, a new Blog Finder widget and much more! Happy day!

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Point made, Mr. Lyons, the blogosphere can be a nasty place, especially if you’re in the business of managing a public image. The phenomenon has set off a competitive market for online reputation management-a ring in which Feedster and Biz360 were quick to throw their hats.

On Monday the two companies announced a partnership to provide marketing and communications professionals with a service that gleans intelligence from the increasing volume of blog and wiki content discussing companies, products, competitors and trends. BlogView, an expansion of Biz360′s Market360, automates sentiment ratings and surfaces topics and influencers related to the aforementioned categories.

Biz360′s Senior Manager of Market Strategy, Brian Glover, refrained from making mention of previous public image metrics providers like Intelliseek and IBM’s Public Image Monitoring Solution. But Glover says the service is unique because of a pending patent technology, with the technological aid of Feedster refreshing 18 million feeds a day, that “learns” a client’s understanding of language nuances.

“Our biggest differentiators are our Point-of-View Sentiment and Auto Discovery technologies, which allow us to deliver far deeper and relevant intelligence than other services,” said Glover.

“We’re the only company that has automated sentiment ratings toward specific companies, products and issues you’re tracking. Also, Point-of-View Sentiment is a machine-learning technology that “learns” a client’s style of rating–what’s positive to one client may be negative to another, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to rating sentiment.”

Auto Discovery surfaces buzz phrases, influencers and brand associations related to the topic. For example, marketers can answer questions like “what’s the buzz around the latest iPod?” or “who are the influencers driving discussion of Avian Flu?”

This contextual analysis technology is fed by active blog feeds provided by Feedster for real time monitoring. The blogosphere, like a house of mirrors, makes it difficult to identify reality-a problem that Feedster president Chris Redlitz says this partnership aims to solve.

“The Blogosphere is noisy and hard to track since for every legitimate blog there are dozens more that are essentially fake. Feedster has an advanced ability to monitor everything in the blog world and provide Biz360 postings that are meaningful and actionable,” said Retlitz.

BlogView is available now as part of Market360, which supports RSS, or as a standalone service. The capabilities will also be available through LexisNexis MarketImpact and StrategyOne’s MediaMind.

“Bite me, Bob,” fired Johnson at the “Meet the Blog and Feed Search Engines” session after Wyman gave him a little grief for Feedster taking 8 seconds to retrieve results. Wyman’s PubSub engine takes 3 seconds-a statement coupled with some other choice words that Johnson called “an overreaching statement in arrogance.”

Wyman was adding to his braggadocios claims that PubSub was the fastest search engine out there because of the engine’s real-time information collection, logging some 3000 documents per minute.

“It takes [other search engines] four weeks to get around the full web,” said Wyman. “Imagine trying to find a red mustang for sale in New York on Google. Google’s not a good tool for that.”

To save you the trouble, here are Google’s results for that. Google Base, on the other hand is lacking in this department.

Another place Google is lacking, according to Wyman and Johnson, is the engine’s seeming inability to differentiate between news sites and blogs and splogs.

“Like pornography, I know a blog when I see one,” said Johnson touting the value of tagging for combating the problem. People, in his estimation, are much more difficult to fool than a robot.

Not everyone shares his enthusiasm for tagging. At an earlier session, though acknowledging that searchers were using tags, Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sullivan said, “I largely loathe tagging. It’s a waste of time, a backward step.” Sullivan favors automated indexing over user-generated.

But to Feedster’s credit, the engine adds crawlers and ping servers to end-user submissions collecting data form news sites, blogs, podcasts, and feeds, among others on a newly redesigned site that launched last Friday.

For Johnson, tags have a special function in the search world.

“We’re trying to make it easier for people to get back to things they know they’ve seen, but can’t find it,” he said.

Rivalries between Johnson and Wyman aside, the pair had no problem criticizing the areas in which Google is lacking.

Though Google Product Manager Nathan Stoll said Google would be integrating Google News and Blog Search soon, it didn’t stall Wyman’s mutation of Blogspot into “Splogspot.”

After an audience member inquired about more stringent authentication for blogging to combat robotic blogs, Wyman and Johnson were singing the same tune.

“You’re talking to the wrong group,” said Wyman, at which point Johnson sprang up and pointed at Stoll.

“Talk to him,” said Johnson.