Managing the Technorati community

Starting Tuesday, February 1, I will start a new job as Community Manager at Technorati. I will be responsible for helping the world understand Technorati’s service offerings and providing developers with the tools they need to build and extend Technorati. I will help make your voices heard and build new features to strengthen the links we create while consuming and producing content.

I am excited to be working with a team of smart and passionate people. Technorati is not the only company competing to be your live search destination and keep you informed of the latest happenings in the areas you care about. The differentiating factor is the team of people at Technorati working hard to make the business work .

I have written about Technorati many times before, partially motivated by the idea of my voice being heard and the ability to make a difference in the service I use. Dave Sifry motivated that feedback loop early on, and I remember when he first commented on my weblog post a conversation was started. I continued to participate in the feedback loop and develop applications on top of the Technorati database. I now have the opportunity to energize a community of users and developers in the same way Dave energized me a year ago.

I do not remember the first time I used Technorati, but I remember chatting with Scott Johnson of Feedster about the company at Gnomedex in July 2003 and the old page design looks very familiar.

The interview process

I first inquired about a job at Technorati in May of last year. Technorati was hiring on an invitation-only basis due to a very limited budget. In December Richard Ault and I had breakfast to talk shop, and he asked if I would be interested in working for Technorati. Richard and Dave put together a job description with a little input from me regarding what I would like to work on if I came onboard. I took a day off from NexTag and met with Dorion, Ian, Jason, and Derek. Everyone was very busy getting tags ready. Theresa explained to me what are some of the current features of Technorati in case I was not already familiar (she must have had little background on me!). I met with Richard again a week later over coffee and reviewed the job offer. I accepted the offer that afternoon.

Why do I mention all these details? Technorati is hiring, and you might be interested in an open position and go through some of the same process I just did. I like to provide job candidates with a more personal experience than most companies.

What’s next?

I will continue write about Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, and other companies in the weblog search space. My comments may now be seen as an official Technorati position so I will have to watch what I type a bit more.

Adding a community manager to a staff of twelve is a big move for any company and a strong signal to a community of users. Expect big things and we will all be working hard to deliver new tools to track the world live web.