I have some history with PubSub, namely due to an ill-advised comment placed by one of their employees and reviewing their linkstats service and finding it broken and unreliable. PubSub CEO CTO, Bob Wyman thought my commentary was “abusive” and refused to respond, and then tried to raise the discussion as to what types of criticism companies should respond. Common sense suggests that a response to all bugs in a system should be addressed, regardless of the source.

Personal differences aside, my points remain. The last time I checked the errors I mentioned in detail are still unfixed and the system is still broken. Actions and time are much more telling than words.

With that in mind, it’s totally unsurprising to me that earlier today Mike at TechCrunch tagged RSS aggregator PubSub in the DEADPOOL, citing:

Blog search engine PubSub had massive layoffs today after last minute merger discussions with knownow fell apart. It looks like a shutdown is imminent. Pubsub ousted founding CEO Salim Ismail in March after losing a power struggle with co-founder Bob Wyman

Wyman also had a power struggle with Dave Winer during Bloggercon III over whether or not he was improperly advertising during the event. Note to fellow bloggers: don’t be fooled, this Wyman seems like a real prince, consider yourself lucky if he does snub your blog because I sure do. With him unwaveringly at the helm in a “power struggle” with other bloggers, a co-founder and god knows who else, PubSub’s fate appears to be sealed.

However, I do wish the employees that don’t leave questionably spammy comments on blogs the best of luck in finding work elsewhere. I’m sure they’ll do just fine.

Update 6/14/2006 10:22am PST: Wyman posts on his blog with some interesting quotes: “Thus, our “doors” will close soon if we can’t find someone to pull us out of the current situation. Persons with fast access to cash and a desire for some of the industry’s best technology are advised to contact us rapidly… I believe firmly that the cause of our difficulties is not the team we have built nor is it the technology we’ve developed. Both are great … I’m terribly sorry that we’ve spent so much time on this internal political issues and haven’t devoted more time to pursuing our product plans and building a better product for our users.”

Update 6/15/2006 3:54am PST: Wyman stops by TechCrunch follow-up post and points out that his post has been helpful, and also corrects the record (and now I’ve corrected above) that he is the Pubsub CTO and has never been the CEO: “The blogosphere has proved itself to be a useful communications tool in a very unusual situation… Frankly, I only wish that I had created that post sooner.”

Update 7/1/2006 9:42am PST: Dave Winer writes: “I’m sitting next to John Furrier at Gnomedex and he says he heard from Bob Wyman last night that PubSub has shut down and their engineers have found jobs at other companies.”

Did this post make you go hmm?

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