A quick note from Gary.

Over the past few years one of the most useful research tools we have at are disposal (you do to) has been Topix. We often find items here we don’t see elsewhere and/or spot them first on Topix. Their crawl is first-rate as are the services they offers researchers. It’s good to see that more and more people are learning about and using the Topix service. I can only remember a few presentations during the past few years where I haven’t discussed Topix.

So, what’s up? Why this post?

We’ve learned that Rich Skrenta, a co-founder of the company and the CEO is leaving to spend more time with his family. He shares his thoughts here. Skrenta will remain on the Topix Board of Directors.

The good news is that Topix isn’t going anywhere. Chris Tolles has been named the new CEO. That’s great news. Chris has been a part of the Topix team since the very beginning, back in the days that Topix was located above a trophy shop in Palo Alto.

Rich has not only a friend but is a wonderful developer and business person. In other words great “technical vision” (building something useful for the searcher) and on the business side both hiring great people. Don’t also forget that in 2005, 75% of Topix was acquired by three major publishers, Tribune, Knight-Ridder, and Gannett.

Before Topix, many of you know that Rich was at AOL where he was a part of the team that developed the DMOZ software.

So, that’s the latest.

ResourceShelf wishes Rich the very best and we hope that in the near future this “infopreneur” is back online with what is likely to be an interesting and useful service. We will also monitor his blog for updates and some of the most interesting commentary about the Internet.

We also wish the very best to Chris Tolles and the rest of the team.

Topix illustrates that good things can happen to good people.

Fast Facts About Topix
Did you know that Topix provides very useful timelines to help focus a search by date and also spot trends.

Topix also offers cases sensitive searching. In other words, SAT is different than sat. Finally, the offer thousands of pre-built topical topics updated in near real-time with content. In fact, you’ll also find pages for every Zip Code in the U.S. and most Postal Codes in Canada.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 and is filed under Information Industry, News Search, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.