Bloglines Looking for New Direction and New Director
I use Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice. When I logged into my account the other day, I saw an ad touting the headline "Come work for Bloglines." Seems they are looking for a business director, someone to give strategic direction to the app. As you may know, Bloglines was acquired by Ask.com last year from then CEO Mark Fletcher. Mark's dream for the site was to turn it into the "homepage of the 21st century," whatever that means. However, Mark left the company last June to take care of his cats and pursue new
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PrintI use Bloglines as my RSS reader of choice. When I logged into my account the other day, I saw an ad touting the headline "Come work for Bloglines." Seems they are looking for a business director, someone to give strategic direction to the app.
As you may know, Bloglines was acquired by Ask.com last year from then CEO Mark Fletcher. Mark's dream for the site was to turn it into the "homepage of the 21st century," whatever that means.
However, Mark left the company last June to take care of his cats and pursue new ventures, according to a post on his blog. Entrepreneurs rarely make good employees, and Mark is a serial entrepreneur. Since his departure, it appears little has been done to improve the product.
It seems to me that RSS readers these days are a dime a dozen. They are commodities, so much so that Austin, TX-based Pluck saw the handwriting on the wall and shut down their reader in favor of putting their eggs in the Blogburst and other baskets.
But, if you're in the mood for a career change, and want to take on what is sure to be a challenging role requiring a great deal of vision and creativity, submit your resume. Here's a bit of information about the job...
"As the GM of Bloglines you will be responsible for overall management of Bloglines including driving and overseeing the product, partner, marketing, customer acquisition and PR strategy and operations of the business. You will be the primary public spokesperson for Bloglines and will be expected to be a leading voice in the industry by conveying enthusiasm and passion for both Bloglines and the blogging/online syndicated content industry."Personally, I think the person who takes the reins at Bloglines will have to fight an uphill battle in order to make it the entity Mark Fletcher envisioned, especially considering he/she is going up against the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Firefox, Microsoft, Newsgator, and a bevy of others. Too bad Jason Calacanis already landed a new job. This one might have been right up his alley.
