Technorati CEO Sifry Departs, Layoffs Planned

David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati, is leaving his post and taking on the role of chairman. The blog search engine and meme tracker has also moved to lay off eight employees.

Although Technorati has been searching for a replacement CEO since this past spring, Sifry wrote in a blog post that he has decided to move on. In lieu of a new CEO, a committee of the Office of the President will consist of three execs: CFO Teresa Malo, VP of Engineering Dorion Carroll and VP of Marketing Derek Gordon. Peter Hirshberg will continue to manage development of the company’s conversational marketing initiative, corporate development and public relations, he wrote.

Sifry cited his love of start-up ventures and Technorati’s evolution to a “revenue-stage” company as factors in his decision to relinquish the CEO spot. Sifry also co-founded companies including Sputnik and Linuxcare.

“Technorati is now a revenue stage business – we’ve been hiring up sales folks, as well as building much more detailed roadmaps and product pipelines,” he wrote in his blog. “Customer-driven needs, pipeline management, operational management, and expense control are now a much bigger part of our life as a company than it was when we were running on a couple of servers in my basement.”

Sifry also announced that eight of the company’s employees would be let go, but didn’t give additional details about who those employees would be or from what department.

Technorati has been busy over the past year with the acquisition of media aggregation technology outfitPersonal Bee, and new deals with Paramount Pictures and Ogilvy North America.