David Sifry, CEO for Technorati, the Web's leading resource for blog statistics, searching and tagging, offers up an excellent case study for transparency for companies immersed in the world of Web 2.0. After I had guessed earlier this week that Technorati was going after spam blogs and later, that the company was about to give an update to the "State of the Blogosphere" or "State of the Live Web", no less than Sifry came here to confirm that was indeed the case. He even posted a comment letting me know when it was published. Yet, rumors continued to swirl around the company, saying that Technorati was either up for sale, or that he would be leaving the CEO role. Today, he wrote on his blog that Technorati was indeed looking for a new CEO.

Earlier this week on louisgray.com, David wrote, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm very very happy at Technorati!!!", to a commentor who suggested his departure was imminent. He again today said "I have no intention of leaving," and in his version of events, says that it was he who approached the company's board with the idea to change roles. While it's not too uncommon to see early founders change roles as companies grow, it is less common to have that change initiated by the founder themselves, so its possible the board and others had been exerting pressure, but of course, I have absolutely zero insight there.

In the Web space, customers care a lot more about products, services, functionality and integration than they do the individuals pulling the levers and writing the code. Kevin Rose at Digg is a great name and icon for his company, Mena and Ben Trott do the same for Six Apart. But even as transparency in blogging increases communications and openness, the mega-egos of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison who ruled tech in the 1980s and 1990s are going to be less important, I believe. Sifry, as far as I am concerned, continues to do a great job marketing and promoting the service, above marketing himself. Technorati, despite its occasional bumps is still unparalleled in its capabilities, and I've particularly enjoyed some of the new widgets they released earlier this week, which you can see on this blog, from blog reaction tallies to a button displaying Web influence.

So David, if you're still visiting and still reading, we wish you luck in the search, and hope that whichever direction the company takes, that you continue to promote great technology and innovation.

(Additional Coverage: TechCrunch and Startup Meme)

For me, just about the only real benefit to using my Dell laptop at the office is access to Google Desktop and its thorough search capabilities through my six-year Outlook archive. If I've written the message or received it at any point, Google Desktop can find it for me quickly. For nearly everything else, I use the Mac. Now, it appears that after 30 months of neglect, Mac OS X users finally can get their hands on Google Desktop.

While Apple highlights its integrated Spotlight search capability as part of Mac OS X, in reality, Spotlight is a program I try not to use all that often. It's slow, and doesn't present a Web-like interface in the way that Google Desktop does for Windows (or for the Web, of course).

While we're installing the new program and indexing our hard drive, you can check out a pair of writeups from a pair of bloggers with early access, at Ars Technica and TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). TUAW also offers a screenshot gallery.

To download, visit Google's Mac software downloads page.

Turns out we were right. Not that I should be hired by Law and Order for my deduction skills, but it was indeed true that Technorati was planning a new release today, after I saw David Sifry's blog make updates in preparation. While it's not yet a state of the blogosphere, the blog search and tagging leader did update us on the company.

Meanwhile, a new "State of the Live Web" will be posted by end of week.

The new rundown, which can be found here, shows that the company is going "up and to the right" in its visitor growth, to 9 million unique visitors last month, up 141% quarter over quarter. The site also remains the most highly trafficked blog search engine, ahead of Google, Feedster and others.

Also of note is that CEO David Sifry confirmed my suspicions that Technorati was going after spam blogs. He writes, "Our results are more complete, spam-free, and delivered more quickly than any other service on the Web. We're not perfect - we're always looking to get better, but I'm heartened by the progress we've made over the last six months or so." (More detail here)

Sifry noted the updates in comments placed on this blog, saying "We have been doing a massive spam cleanup," adding "Thanks for noticing! I hope that you've seen a difference..."

Looking forward to the updates later this week. In the meantime, check out the summary, or take part in Robert Scoble's challenge - is Technorati still the best blog search engine in the land?

4 minutes before midnight tonight, Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, posted a note that in one place, summarized the company's research into the state of the blogosphere. As the company famously tracks and tags more than 70 million blogs, they have become a real authority as to trends, growth and the sheer volume of information that is cranking out each day.

Though there is no clear timetable to Technorati's updates, revisions to the "State of the Blogosphere" took place every two months in 2006, but the last was posted in October. Prior to 2006, there were three updates in 2005 and the inaugural October 2004 update.

Sifry's quick archival of the posts also included the tags "sotb2007" and "solw2007", short for "State of the Blogosphere" and "State of the Live Web". As none have yet been posted, it suggests a new slew of facts will spill forth on continued blogosphere growth. In fact, his post is the only one in all of Technorati's database to contain such tags. I expect soon we will get more data that shows the rest of the blogosphere is going "Up and to the right".

A direct link to the summary is now here: http://www.sifry.com/stateoftheliveweb