New Six Apart CEO announced

[matgb]

barakb25 is standing down. His replacement is this guy: The opportunity to lead this icon of the Internet is both exciting and humbling. I am grateful to many people. To Barak Berkowitz, who brought me into the company and supported me as his successor when he resigned, and the board that has but their trust in me. To Ben and Mena Trott who had the

Comments

[trobadora]

Interestingly, they've now turned off comments on the lj_biz post...

[matgb]

Aye-I saw that after it reloaded when I hit the 'track' button.

It would, inevitably, have had a bunch of the more lunatic fen descending on it demanding policy changes, and a whole lot more rational comments asking how it'll affect LJ.

Ah well, their company.

[beckyzoole]

Possibly to avert a storm of "WTF? How is Mena Trott our founder? She ain't LJ's founder!"

[foxfirefey]

Hahah, I'm nitpicky about that, but the post does seem to mean the founder is supposed to refer to the previous mention of Six Apart, rather than for LJ, so it's clean by my litmus test.

[curiouswombat]

I guess the real question is how well will he 'get' LJ?

Probably not a lot.

[matgb]

That's my fear. Having launched a fairly decent aggregator, he's now CEO of the company that ran the first aggregator, but so few people seem to understand that the friends page really is LJs main USP.

(hint: if you join the comm, your comments don't start screened, saving us effort...)

[foxfirefey]

I'm around today, so I'll set up ESN and unscreen thingies that come in. Almost all comments do get unscreened, but every now and again there is some random drive by trollage or NAH NAH NAH FROTHING ANGRY NAH NAH NAH HEAVY METAL.

[matgb]

Thanks-I'm in this evening, but tomorrow I'll mostly be offline or swamped, I'm co-running the registration and badge printing set up at a 6K attendee conference. Joy. I looked at the option of turning screening off, but, well, I think this post may attract some nuts regardless. Unfortunately.

[molrak]

His background seems more promising than Barak's, and I like the fact that he mentioned blogging in free speech-restricted areas like Iran and China. Only time will tell, of course, but this feels like a positive move to me.

[elfwreck]

Babble about the "importance of free speech" in places where a girl can get killed for identifying her rapist is meaningless. The idea of "I want everyone in the world to have the freedom of speech that corporate America allows in its boardrooms" is meaningless.

So he's for free speech... does that mean he'll allow admitted pedophiles with no criminal record and no intention of criminal activity to have accounts on LJ? Or does he mean "free speech, except for perverts?"

[dkmnow]

All I could gather from his oblique sales-pitch blog entry was that he's quite expert at appealing to fluffy-headed pseudo-idealists. Now, that could mean that he himself is a fluffy-headed pseudo-idealist, or it could just mean that he's really slick.

Either way, the implications are none too encouraging.

[bitter_crimson]

Oh my goodness, Parapluesch.

Erm, sorry for the complete off-topic-ness of this comment.

*groan*

[dkmnow]

"...with democracies finally outnumbering autocracies, with liberty outpacing oppression."

WHATtheFUCK planet is this dweeb living on?

Oh, yeah -- Planet Puppies-And-Rainbows Inc.

Coming soon: Chief Chrizzle-Dizzle And The Six-Aye Band's blockbuster debut CD, Keep On Bloggin' In The Free World™, and their World PepsiMAX™ Support-Our-Troops Tour T-shirt.

Yeah, and MAL-WART is going Green™!

No, really!

*sigh*

Nevvvermind.

Re: *groan*

[matgb]

Ah. I may have glossed over that paragraph.

For a supposed 'pro blogger', he really can't write well for the web, maybe now he employs some usability specialists they could give him some pointers...

Idealists-they come in every flavour, even mine. They're always wrong as well.

Re: *groan*

[opalexian]

Maybe 'he' is actually a bot. >_>

Re: *groan*

[foxfirefey]

What kind of an assertion is that? That would be one hella expensive bot. We've mentioned how the purchase of Rojo by Six Apart was mostly to get ahold of staff they wanted, sources indicating Chris Alden most of all of 'em.

[pyrop]

I wouldn't expect much to change. Chris Alden was one of 6A's EVP and general managers since Rojo was acquired (Sep 2006). It's not like they're bringing in a fresh new face from outside 6A.

He does make more sense as a CEO than Barak, though, whom Mena admitted doesn't know anything about blogging.