IndustryFormer Yahoo Exec Toni Schneider On Life At Automattic

Former Yahoo Exec Toni Schneider On Life At Automattic

Yahoo’s had a number of executives
depart to
start-ups and smaller companies recently. Toni Schneider was one of them,
leaving last
January.

Swapping job security for a startup
at Business 2.0 has John Battelle
talking with him about making the move to
Automattic
.

It’s interesting to hear that despite the sale of Oddpost for $29 million,
which Schneider headed, he still has to work for a living. Also interesting was
his redefinition of comment spam as "web spam" and how fighting it with the
Akismet service that Automattic runs is a
revenue source.

I’m sorry — I just can’t help myself over the irony of Automattic making
money fighting comment spam while just over a year ago, the company’s WordPress
side got dinged
for making money through search spam.

I know, I know. Just let it go. Certainly Automattic’s new direction and

recent funding
probably means they won’t find themselves going the search
spam route again, accidentally, inadvertently or otherwise. And goodness knows
the irony remains even bigger about Google’s Blogger service generating plenty
of search spam that it in turn has to fight.

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