The kerfuffle over Jobster spills onto Meritocracy today, and threatens to keep rolling for another week as the actual announcement occurred that 60 people were laid off from Jobster. It's big news because Jason Warner has been around Jobster since they first started, and was a client at Starbucks for many years.
What is most interesting about this story is that given all the transparency created in the blogosphere, why haven't more people suggested that things might be trending towards 'askew' at Jobster most recently than now?
The recruiting blogosphere, as it is, has made many plenty of comments about Jobster - but that was 12-18 months ago. I believe most of those comments revolved around not knowing what Jobster's business model was.
There was the comments made about the WorkZoo Acquisition (and the TalentZoo aftermath) a report on a scuffle at a conference, questions about their launch into vertical search, questions about the acquisition of Recruiting.com, and a lot of chatter about their VC funding. A simple search of "Jobster negative blogosphere 2005" yields lots of stories from blogs - some positive, some negative, and some in comparison to other technologies.
From Russell Glass of ZoomInfo on Charlene Li's blog:
Thus, my take is that this may be a big distraction to Jobster if they believe in their core business. They now have a non-differentiated service to focus on in addition to a model that has a lot of potential, but is unproven. LinkedIn's approach with SimplyHired seems to make more sense -- they can deliver the valuable content within their service model without the distractions of running a business they know little about.
The blogosphere has done just fine reporting the whispers - but rumor reporting, gossip? I'm glad that wasn't a big part of what we do. I think most of the blogosphere likes Jobster because they've done a great job of reaching out to blogs. They write them themselves. That we expect them to be at all transparent is a minor miracle in itself. Transparency is all well and good, but that doesn't mean every decision must immediatlely be broadcast to people outside of jobster employ.
As for their business model, I have to admit that I was a bit confused myself, but then I sat down with Jason Goldberg when he came to St Louis and I had the chance to talk to his team when the presented to the HR folks here.
What I saw was they were the only company I saw publicly addressing the technology changes coming in recruiting - free job posting, social networks, social tagging, blogs - and snapping up the talent that best understood that emerging trends.
In a room where I was the only attendee to know the word Web 2.0, Jobster had a powerful impact on the audience.
As for the blogosphere, Jobster's acquisition of several properties, as well as their actual involvement with bloggers at all levels, blunts the kind of hard-nosed rumor-mongering that many gossips want to hear. Considering the disdain with which dot-coms are held these days, it's no small feat to co-opt an emerging community by joining it.
So they laid off 60 people. Why is this such a big deal? Other than the media blunders made by Goldberg in creating consternation among his troops, I don't see that this is that big of a deal. It's the risk of having a CEO blog. - and it was much better handled than the f***** company days.
I don't have regular talks with Jobster employees about their company, but what I did hear, I didn't write about - out of courtesy.
Just because I blog doesn't mean the whole world is privy to every comment someone makes around me.
Much Ado about Nothing. That's my verdict.
(Disclaimer: My relationship with Jobster revolved around my activities for Recruiting.com, listed here)
