Expedia founder and ex-CEO Rich Barton has been very busy since leaving Expedia in March 2003. I talked in June last year of his support of the launch of the lawyer search and ranking site Avvo.com. Appears we can add another web investment to Barton's list. In addition to the the real estate re-invention service Zillow and Avvo we have an announcement through Techcrunch that Glassdoor.com has raised $3 million from Benchmark (another Rich Barton gig). No hints from the site or Techcrunch profile what glassdoor will be doing but there a lot of ex-Expedia types involved. Rob Hohman (ex-President of Hotwire and then Prez of Classic Custom Vacations) is the CEO and Tom Besse (Expedia Asia Pacific) is the VP Product & Marketing. Add in a hint of EzRez through VP of Engineering Ryan Aylward and it begs the question whether or not travel may be back on Barton's agenda. I doubt it.I presume when not coming up with whatever this site will do that the staff of glassdoor spend their spare time watching movies from Netflix (another Barton activity).
Update - 20 May 08. Still no word on what Glassdoor will be doing but HotelMarketing.com is reporting that the Board of Glassdoor.com is filling out with a number of heavy-weights including Erik Blachford, CEO of TerraPass and former president and CEO of Expedia, Inc. and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp’s travel division; Stephen Kaufer, president and CEO of TripAdvisor and former president of CDS, Inc.; and Rusty Rueff, former CEO of SNOCAP, the digital music commerce provider for MySpace, and previous EVP at Electronic Arts and executive at PepsiCo.
Update 2 - Now we know what is cooler - recruitment and job information. News from Techncrunch that Glassdoor is a salary comparisons and employee review site. A little bit like Payscale but with more internal comparison, companies reviews and even some internal bitchiness and border line office gossiping. Detailed review inside the Techcrunch post.
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