Richard Jalichandra assumed the office of the Chief Executive Officer, CEO of Technorati in October 2007 at a time Technorati was reeling and almost fallen. He took over from the founding CEO, David Sifry who stepped down and left Technorati without having a CEO to succeed him.
Technorati actually started in 2002.
As blogs increased exponentially, Technorati came up as a search directory for blogs. Today, Technorati is the leading blog search engine, and it indexes more than a million blogs. It tracks authority, influence and comprehensiveness of posts in the blogosphere.
Technorati – The Past & the Present
When Richard Jalichandra came on board in 2007, Technorati was in serious trouble.
The founding CEO David Sifry left without a replacement; employees were laid off; and Google blog search just entered the scene as a competitor. Yet, Richard Jalichandra was undaunted in the face of all these.
Richard Jalichandra came on board in 2007 and changed many things in Technorati.
Technorati Media was launched in June 2008 which has quickly become the largest social media ad network. In December 2010, Technorati Media was ranked the 10th largest media entity in the US, 4th largest social media property and second largest blog property by comScore.
Today, Technorati is described on its about page as,
… a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers.
In addition, Technorati Media owns three web properties –
- Technorati.com – Their flagship site; a gargantuan blog search engine.
- BlogCritics.org – A community of journalists with close to 100 thousand articles written by thousands of authors.
- Twittorati.com – A site displaying top blogs on Twitter. Twittorati.com tagline is where the blogosphere and twittersphere meet.
Just recently, Technorati partnered with AppNexus to complement their sales of advertising. AppNexus is involved in technology and software.
Explaining the reason for this partnership, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra noted that,
The entire ecosystem is changing … There is a desire among clients to buy quality inventory in an automated way.
… and AppNexus will help them properly automate more of their services.
Technorati also regularly release a ‘state of the blogosphere’ publication. You can find out about the present state of the blogosphere in a recent video of Brian Solis and Richard Jalichandra.
Richard Jalichandra- His Life before Technorati
Before becoming the CEO of Technorati in 2007, Richard Jalichandra held several roles. He was Vice President of Business & Corporate Development at IGN Entertainment, SVP of Business Development for Fox Interactive and SVP of Corporate Development for Exponential Interactive.
He was also an M & A and strategy consultant for startups, member of advisory board at MyYearbook.com and Pixsy and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Battery Ventures.
Richard Jalichandra has a B. Sc in Business Administration from the University of California and an MBA from the University of Washington.
Words from the Horse’s Mouth
Here is an Interview reported 4 days after Richard Jalichandra stepped in as CEO in 2007. He was confident of his ability, and he was prepared for the job. He said that,
Anytime you go into an early stage company you have a lot of work cut out for you … if it were easy everyone and their grandmothers would jump into it like the gold rush in 1999. We definitely have our share of challenges, but one of the first things I noticed stepping in is that we’re sitting on top of an amazing array of assets. Things definitely changed when Google BlogSearch hit the scene, but there have still been plenty of times when we’ve beat them to the punch. So, we’re just going to keep improving.
Concerning his immediate plans, he said,
It’s not uncommon for early stage companies to try a number of different things … Like any company, we’re going to want to improve our service first. Our focus is going to be on trying some new things and enhancing some of the existing services until we meet the expectations of the blogger community.
If you are an owner of a startup, and you are still working 60 hours per week and are feeling stressed up, hear Richard Jalichandra,
… I’m one of those typical start-up guys who keep moving from one project to another … Even as an entrepreneur-in-residence I was working 80 to 100 hours a week.
Further Reading on Business Leaders
- Maximizing Your Social Media Strategies: Advice from Thought Leaders in Internet Marketing
- Social Networking Vs Blogging & Email Vs SMS – Struggle For Existence
- Self-Branding: How to Separate Yourself from the Crowd & Build Credibility on the Internet
- Business Tips: 5 Practical Steps to Achieving a More Productive Day
- Internet Entrepreneurs: Meet the Millionaire Dropout that Founded WordPress, Matt Mullenweg
