Another season, another shake-up. Feedster co-founder and chief technology officer Scott Johnson has left the San Francisco-based company, according to sources close to the company. The reasons for his departure are no clear, though some speculate it is due to the teething problems of a company grappling with hyper growth. Feedster was launched by Scott Johnson and François Schiettecatte in 2003.
This is the second high-level departure from the company. In early September, Scott Rafer, then the CEO announced that he was leaving the company. His departure came after Feedster managed to ink a deal with AOL and raised more money from Japanese company, Mitsui & Co. Chris Redlitz, Feedster’s Vice President, Sales and Marketing took over as the CEO President of the company.
Updated: Now a word from Feedster’s other co-founder François Schiettecatte, Chief Scientist, “There are several new business initiatives to be launched in 2006 that will highlight some of my development both domestically and internationally.”
I was wondering how long it would be before Web 2.0o was affected by the old rules.
Now, it is really beginning to look like the dotcom era, with founders forced out for VC chosen executives (at least it looks that way).
i could not agree with you more… more things change, the more they remain the same!
Which is a shame, actually. It reminds me of the marcom people that are becoming too tied into one brand or another. That’s not going to save them from being let go when things don’t go well.
But, that’s a lesson from 2000 that some weren’t around to learn.
Is Feedster experiencing hyper growth or are they stalled out? The split between Feedster and Technorati since the beginning of this year is quite stunning:
http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=379&h=216&r=2y&y=r&u=gigaom.com/&u=feedster.com
Is Feedster experiencing hyper growth or are they stalled out? The split between Feedster and Technorati since the beginning of this year is quite stunning:
http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=379&h=216&r=2y&y=r&u=technorati.com/&u=feedster.com
Hello All,
Om — thanks for the writeup. As a founder and still a major shareholder in Feedster I don’t think its appropriate for me to comment in this context.
I will be blogging, permanently, on my new (ok it old but its new again) on my Fuzzyblog at http://fuzzyblog.com/ and information will be posted there as I feel appropriate.
That said, I will take the opportunity to pimp myself here a bit: I’m back in the consulting market and if you want the kind of expertise I have to offer, let me know. Resume will be posted on http://fuzzyblog.com/ shortly.
Thanks Om.
Scott
And I created the Feedster logo. I never saw a cent from it. And then when Feedster got big they removed my link from their site of contributors. Way to say thanks.
wow! Om’s blog has an many visitors as Feedster’s ..simply amazing! 🙂
Hi Jason,
You have my apologies on that one. One thing that I ‘ve learned from Feedster is that as a company grows when a Founder takes “help ware” from people (such a the logo you did for us), the committments that are made (my giving you credit on the about page) sometimes become hard to maintain as responsibilities shift. I know it disappeared a few times due to this and when you contacted me I did make a good faith effort to get it back up on the page (and I succeeded several times).
Sadly I spent most of 2005 doing little but battling Blog Spam and my ability to focus on site details like that passed from my hands and other people didn’t feel the same way about things like that I did. You have my heart felt apologies for this.
Since I’m no longer with the company I can’t make an official apology but I do feel badly about this. If you wish to pursue resolution with the company then you might wish to speak with Mr. Chris Redlitz our President. I’m sure he can resolve this issue for you. His email is c redlitz @ feedster.com (eliminate the space).
Take care.
Scott
“Scott’s final papers were faxed to Feedster from the Technorati office! I spent this morning with Scott and I can tell you this was not of his will or a pleasant process.”
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/12/feedster_loses.html
So does that mean that Technorati has hired Scott?
Hi,
I haven’t joined Technorati. I don’t feel that would be either ethical or fair to the investors in Feedster. However Niall is actually a pretty good friend and he and I have palled around at a lot of events such as BloggerCon, etc.
I have the utmost respect for Dave, Niall, Tantek, Kevin and the other fine folks at Technorati. When an industry grows as fast as blogs are, its not necessary to bash your competitors — you grow as a function of the market as a whole NOT by taking share away from competitors. For this reason, as well as the fact that its simply good manners, I always kept up good relations with Technorati, PubSub, Greg over at BlogDigger, etc. As a founder it was very important to me that Feedster never engage in competitor bashing (taunting a competitor on a panel is a wee bit different and after that recently happened Bob Wyman and I had drinks together).
Beyond that I really can’t comment on Niall’s post.
Scott