Technorati Media, parent company of blog search site Technorati, has acquired Blogcritics.org. The newly purchased site is a user-fueled "online magazine" for bloggers that was already a member of the newish Technorati Media ad network.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Technorati has said that it plans to keep Blogcritics an intact, separate property.
With the acquisition, Technorati says it hopes to help Blogcritics contributors make some money, as well as scale the property to give it more reach. "As part of Technorati Media, we'll be able to grow the community and further improve our platform to attract new audiences," Blogcritics founder Eric Olsen said in a release. "Technorati's mission to help bloggers and people who read blogs is the ideal complement for us."
Acquiring content properties, however, likely won't change the fact that Technorati has been losing ground to Mountain View, Calif.-powered Google Blog Search and (to an extent) the search feature that Twitter built into its technology when it bought Summize. Technorati founder David Sifry has long since left the company, and he's now at the helm of a new start-up called Offbeat Guides.
Blog aggregation start-up Technorati will be launching an ad network later on Tuesday called "Technorati Media," TechCrunch reported. This marks a new direction for the company, which has heretofore focused on blog search and directories.
As TechCrunch commenters note, this is not exactly revolutionary. Ad networks are everywhere. What makes Technorati Media different from a Glam Media or Federated Media is apparently the fact that it'll advertise on "the little guys" as well as high-traffic blogs, promising a better deal than Google's ubiquitous AdSense (it's similar to what Six Apart is doing).
There is also a top-notch lineup of advertisers already on board, which reportedly include Twentieth Century Fox Film, Acura, Adobe Systems, Best Buy, Chevrolet, Honda Motor, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nike, Paramount Pictures, SanDisk, Scion, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Toyota Motor, T-Mobile, Universal Pictures, Verizon, and Visa.
But bloggers have reason to be skeptical, and not just because there are so many ad networks already: Technorati just hasn't been doing a first-rate job in the performance department recently.
Compete.com shows an overall traffic decline since last year, with the exception of a major spike in November that has since subsided. CEO David Sifry stepped down in August, in a move accompanied by several layoffs.
The blog search niche has, meanwhile, been crowded with Google Blog Search--and for zeitgeist measurement tools, there are plenty of Twitter applications that are far more up-to-the-moment.
Some TechCrunch commenters welcomed an alternative to AdSense that would bring in better revenues for smaller publishers. But others brought up Technorati's system outage issues--which admittedly aren't as prolific as, say, Twitter's--and raised concerns about joining a new ad network coming from a company that some have seen as mismanaged.
One directed a comment to Technorati's management and said, "Please fix RSS feeds on search queries first, before you do anything else. They stopped working weeks ago." Another posed the question, "If they've been unable to keep the system functioning and can't track my posts, what makes you think they'll be able to track and pay out ad revenue?"
The commenter continued, "I'll stick with AdSense: I get a nice check every month!"
Technorati clearly needed to change direction in the wake of Google Blog Search, but launching an ad network might just be too little, too late.
Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of blog search company Technorati, has stepped down from his post according to an entry on the company blog. The resignation is effective immediately; he will remain chairman of Technorati's board. Meanwhile, CFO Teresa Malo, vice president of engineering Dorion Carroll and vice president of marketing Derek Gordon will jointly run the company while seeking a new chief executive.
"Making tough choices is a daily reality," Sifry wrote. "But some choices are tougher than others, particularly when they involve one's own self." Technorati, an early entry in the blog search market, has recently been plagued by technical difficulties, revenue headaches and competition from Google Blog Search. Sifry's resignation, as he notes, was not unexpected: "For those of you who follow Technorati regularly, you know that we've been conducting a CEO search since Spring and that it was just a matter of time before I made a transition," he explained. "Rather than waiting for the process to play out, I would go ahead and transition to the board exclusively, taking on the role of Chairman of the Board."
Sifry also announced that eight members of Technorati's staff have been laid off in a move to "adjust our expense structure to be more appropriately aligned with our priorities moving forward."
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