The state of Technorati according to Dave Sifry

By Mercury News
Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 12:10 am in Inside Silicon Valley.

Why is the CEO of Technorati stepping aside? Is the San Francisco blog search engine for sale? How can Technorati become a powerhouse media company? CEO Dave Sifry answers those questions and more in this interview with the Mercury News. A pioneer in the blog search world, Technorati is now four years old and. Some skpetics think the company has stagnated. But Sifry sees an opportunity to grow Technorati to 10 times its current size, into a “next generation new media company.”

Some highlights:

4:15: On why he’s looking for a CEO to replace him: “I’m not a consumer Internet guy. I’m not a guy who’s built a Yahoo or a Google…Could I learn it? Yeah, sure. But the bigger question in my mind was, is it smart for me to essentially have the company pay for my mistakes?”

8:34: On whether Technorati has stagnated: “You know people can think whatever they want to think. That’s totally fine. I mean, I know what the numbers look like. The board knows what the numbers look like. You can look at the charts and the graphs. We know what our revenues are…. What I care about the most is how do we build an absolutely incredible user experience for our users.”

21:10: On whether Technorati is for sale: “I think that the opportunity around building a really big independent company is very real, and it’s very exiciting. And I’ve got investors and a team who feel really bought into it….I’ve met people who, you know, are built to flip. Remember that book? Me personally - and maybe you can call it a personal flaw - I don’t know how to do that. It’s not in my nature. ”

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