I’m not saying that they went badly (the acqs) but rather that the old sites disappeared… which is exactly what I expect to happen with RDC. I don’t know what will happen to the domain name, or how it will be used… but much like Jobby, it will be absorbed and disappear.

As for Jobster and getting people at RDC excited about what Jobster offers… well I don’t think that is happening now, or ever will with the structure of the site the way that it is. I didn’t understand the purchase by Jobster, nor do I understand Jobster’s change in business models over it’s brief existence. I watched Joel’s interview with JGo at ERE and I don’t except his answer to the first question. I think that, if the VC do, then good for him… but from where I sit, it appears that you have a CEO with a company, some dedicated employees (some no so who have or are planning an exit), and a pile of cash looking for a way to justify its existence. If Jason is serious about building value into Jobster for recruiters , then he should start asking us what we want it to do for us, instead of make posts where he says that we are going to become extinct. [my article Will Recruiters Become Extinct? - http://www.cecsearch.com/WordPress/2006/12/03/will-recruiters-become-extinct/

Brian, I didn’t think at all that you were put up to the comments here. But I would be that you are smart enough to have as part of the acq. of Jobby, negotiated a management contract of some length. That’s a good thing for you! ;-)

“Does anyone besides the small number of regular participants really care about this? ”
Take a look at the number of uniques that visit recruiting.com (or this site, for that matter). I think Jason is interested in bringing recruiting.com (and broader: web 2.0 and its applications to recruiting businesses and practices) to a much larger audience. You represent the early adopters of recruiting blogs - how do we improve things and bring them more mass market?

Again, this is just my interpretation. I’m not being put up to these comments. :) I just started responding because people were talking about Jobby - which is still my baby, despite it being absorbed (which was my doing).

Speaking of misunderstandings, when you said, “I think what Joel is implying is that you can infer what will happen to RDC from the way that JGo goes about other acquisitions,” earlier, were you implying that the Jobby acquisition or the Workzoo acquisition were treated badly? From my perspective (and I feel like I’m qualified to respond here, at least) they were not. Tony and I are still here, for one. Further, workzoo became what is now Jobster search from which we built a huge audience of traffic. Jobby profiles were retooled and merged into Jobster profiles. Both profiles and search are helping us innovate in job posting. Recruiting.com is helping to get people excited about all of this new technology we’re working on… sounds like the acquisitions have been going well to me.

Anyway, this whole rambling post was just my attempt at pointing out that it’s pretty easy to misunderstand what’s going on in these sorts of contexts. :)

Here are JGo’s questions (quoted exactly)

“Is recruiting.com still adding value? While recruiting.com has basically been running itself for the past year (with Jason Davis prodding it along), I’ve recently been putting some though [SIC]as to where we should take the recruiting.com site next. Sometimes I look at what’s going on over there and think to myself: Does anyone besides the small number of regular participants really care about this? (OK, now I thought it out loud, not just to myself). Would love to get your input.”

We could write posts for days illustrating how & why that is such a bad way to phrase what you say was the intended question. My recommendation would be to say:

“As the owner of RDC I’m looking to try to make this site the best it can be for you, the users. I’d love to start a dialog of how we can add more value for you. Please comment here, let’s start a discussion and talk about making a great site/tool even better.”

Now, I don’t claim to be a speech maker or a Gen Y/X wunderkind who is CEO of some web 2.0 powerhouse. BUT, I do know that it isn’t too good to start out the conversation when addressing your audience by insulting them overtly or subtlety. Perhaps that is the reason for Sumser’s choice for Exec. Ed. They seem to share similar penchants for disregard of the audience.

I’m not an official spokesman for Jobster or Jason, but from where I sit (which is a few feet from his desk) the only things I’ve been hearing about recruiting.com over the last few months are a few discussions about how to help make it more valuable for the community. That’s what we do here, after all, try to make our products more valuable to their users. I’m fairly certain Jason’s open question about the value of recruiting.com was an attempt to solicit feedback from its community.

Therefore, I honestly think what would be more productive is a post and discussion about that topic, instead of more tabloid speculation. :)

(Which reminds me, I really don’t like commenting on blogs in this manner. It’s too easy to be misinterpreted.)

Most of the technology in Jobby has been integrated into Jobster in some way, shape, or form, and has since been improved on. I was lucky to have a large part in making that happen. We delayed taking down the old product because we were frankly too busy to get around to it, so we just left it up for people to happily use. I haven’t done a thing to the code since the acquisition, and I’m a bit surprised anyone still used it - we haven’t been touting it at all or even directing any traffic to it. It’s kinda neat that it survived on it’s own for so long without anyone really looking (although I think toward the end the database indexes were so outta whack that searches were hit or miss). I think we’ve far surpassed what we set out to do with Jobby, and we got to use what we learned with our little experiment to make Jobster better.

As far as recruiting.com, I really don’t think there’s any connection at all. I’m not personally involved in that part of Jobster; from my perspective, recruiting.com has always been pretty independent. I suppose we just happen to provide the hosting and some of the manpower. It’s not even the same hosting environment as Jobster or Jobby, so I don’t think you can draw any conclusions about its future from Jobby.

Hope that helps. :)