What is the future of Futurenow?

Every once in a while we get reminded of how, despite people’s hymns of market stability, the market can still shake up the mightiest. This week we were sad to find out that…

The Grok has left the building.

We noticed on Monday morning that a couple of people on Linkedin had changed their profiles. Bryan “the grok” Eisenberg, co-founder of Future Now Inc. [FUTR], is now “formerly employed by…”, as is his brother Jeffery Eisenberg. The former isn’t much of a surprise, after the “Is Bryan’s Brain Elswhere[sic.]?” post on grokdotcom.com, a slightly passive aggressive promotion of Bryan Eisenbergs new blog, shortly after Bryan’s post on Adobe and Omniture showed up Econsultancy. Of course actual news about Bryan’s fate was established a week earlier when the company announced his resignation.

Now I wonder what will happen with his “@theGrok” twitter account? (the answer is he’s keeping it)

The real surprise is Jeffery Eisenberg who has yet to be formally announced as “gone”, though the Future Now ‘about us’ page now reads:
“Founded in 1998 by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar, two of which have since moved on to other projects…”

And his linkedin reports that he’s now “Bryan Eisenberg’s ROI Marketing Column Assistant at ClickZ Network”.

This, of course, follows on the coattails of their CFO leaving in June, some very rough quarters, and having to default to PTM in April.

All this shows how optimizing internet marketing and website optimization companies are still a bit of a problem child in the eyes of many companies; embraced while everything is going well, and frequently abandoned once hard times hit. Something that boggles practitioners, who argue that getting the most out of their marketing platforms is exactly what companies—and the economy in general—needs right now.

We wish the Eisenberg’s the best on their new efforts, and look forward to both updates from http://www.bryaneisenberg.com/, and the bright new future of Future Now.