Archive for the 'Blogs' Category
This says it all really.
PLEASE NOTE: Before you read the below post, here is the context: It was written after a very difficult few days following the collapse of the TechCrunch UK franchise in December 2006 due to the falling out of franchisee Sam Sethi, who I was working with, and TechCrunch owner Mike Arrington. It was also a time when my wife was ill in hospital. The wider context is this: I started my own blog about Web 2.0 and startups in 2006 (tbites.com), but later joined TechCrunch UK with Sam Sethi. Despite promising that there was advertising money to be had in this franchise I was never paid a cent by him for several months. Just as this was making future prospects difficult he fell out with Arrington over his blogging of the Le Web conference. Annoyed with Arrington’s lack of backing of a UK colleague I then worked on a new TechCrunch competitor, Vecosys.com, with Sethi for 4 months while my wife was ill, hoping, all the while, that Sethi and I would secure financing for the idea. We didn’t. Unable to continue working with Sethi on such a precarious basis I parted ways with him to stay at home and help my wife and two children. Sethi went off and launched Blognation.com in mid-2007, a global technology startup blog for 25+ other bloggers. In December of that year he was later accused by two of his main US bloggers of not paying wages, contracts or expenses despite re-assurances that he would and that BlogNation was ‘days’ from securing funding. Sethi denied all of these accusations. Meanwhile, I was not involved in all that. I earnt almost nothing during this time. My wife recovered fully. By August 2007 my annoyance with Mike Arrington had dissipated and we had conversed about re-starting TechCrunch UK as a proper arm of TechCrunch, not a franchise. I duly re-launched it, and at the time of writing I am happy to say that it is going very well.
This is an open letter to Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, from me in my capacity as the former co-editor of TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It is written in light of the events surrounding Le Web 3 and the firing of my co-editor Sam Sethi.
(If you support this view, please Digg it, thanks)
Mike
Please take this as – for what it’s worth – my formal resignation from TechCrunch UK & Ireland. Since I was locked out of the blog with no warning on Wednesday anyway, this is really just a formality. (I am somewhat reminded of times in the past when proprietors have locked the gates to journalists whose copy they did not approve of, but perhaps that is a too grandiose an analogy).
I am sorry it has come to this, but I think my position is untenable given what’s happened.
To be clear, I think your decision to “fire” Sam was wrong, and I plan to say so on my blog with this letter. I feel that this is a case of censorship and by suggesting we remove Loïc Le Meur’s “asshole” comment from a TechCrunch UK post about Le Web you took away from him the opportunity – once his inflammatory comment was out there and immediately captured around the web – to backtrack and apologise and join the conversation about how he was going to improve Le Web 3 next year. If he had done so, the whole incident would have been dismissed and probably forgotten as a rash comment after a badly received conference. We’re all grown-ups after-all.
You asked my colleague and co-editor Sam Sethi to remove the comment in what appeared to be a personal favour to Le Meur (given TechCrunch had no contractual or financial involvement in Le Web 3) and any other comments referring to Le Meur’s comment.
By this stage that was going to be hard. A lot of people had now captured Le Meur’s explosive comment and commented on it themselves, not just on TechCrunch UK but on their own blogs.
What were we going to do? Delete the whole web?
Knowing that Le Meur’s comment was now very much “out there”, Sam’s following post was designed to “put his money where his mouth was” and explain his position after being called an asshole. In that context he had to reference Le Meur’s comment otherwise the post wouldn’t have made any sense.
When this post appeared, Le Meur had already had a long time to retract or at least explain, and he would have been alerted about the comments about his comment via email. As one of France’s biggest bloggers, he ought to know the score.
In the “/putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is” post Sam was also ‘stepping up to the plate’ and saying if the Web community deems a TCUK event as bad then ‘call us out on it’, by all means, just as Le Web 3 had been criticised. As Bomega.com said of this mixing of Le Meur’s comment and the announcement of a TCUK event, “It is less than elegant but I wouldn’t say it is enough to fire someone.”
But that post was removed by you.
And readers denied the opportunity to comment.
However, here is the Google cache of the, now deleted, post.
In this, Sam also encouraged Le Meur to enter the debate about Le Web 3 by posting on his own blog. Sam wrote that if – after being called an asshole – Loic could also step up to the plate and argue why the event was good, and convince the annoyed attendees and the blogger community, he would apologise for his, pretty mild, criticism.
“But equally”, Sam wrote, “if you feel that you may have got it wrong, even slightly, then I guess you have the opportunity to do the same on your own blog and to explain why the agenda was hijacked by French politicians?”
You say in Crunchnotes that in this post Sam ignored Le Meur’s apology to Sam over email. But while the post did have some irony and gentle ribbing of Le Meur, Sam did say: “I have no doubt that Loic and his team worked really hard and I congratulate them for their superb organisation, speaker roster, sponsors and attendee list”. He also said “I fully understand that Loic must have felt totally pissed off with my post but all I said was what many people spoke to me about in the corridors at the event.” This, to me, does not sound like Sam was ignoring Le Meur’s apology to him.
However, it’s also emerged that (and this is something I was going to write up on TCUK&I, but now can’t) that Le Meur fully engineered the “surprise” appearance of Nicolas Sarkozy, French presidential candidate, thus hijacking his own conference for what appears to be political ends. On that revelation alone, Le Meur should be wary of leveling insults at others.
As regards the TechCrunch UK events. I understand you are a busy man, but the ideas about events we have promoted on TCUK for weeks now should not have come as a surprise to you. This was an attempt to build the business here not just as a franchise in the UK but it also would have benefited the TechCrunch US brand, obviously. Sam wasn’t doing it to “futher his own business interests” [sic.] as you say in CrunchNotes. You own the brand. We don’t.
Again, on Crunchnotes you say our event plans “were not specifically approved.” Well, a) this was supposed to be a franchise operation, not two employees with you as line manager and b) there are a lot of things we have done to make TCUK successful and until now you didn’t seem to object to other public announcements about events (or even communicate at all about them, I might add. We thought you trusted us to get on with the job, and we did, but our email inbox from you about anything we were doing is pretty bare).
I also disagree with you in your view that it is unethical to criticise a competitor event, when it has already been trashed far more roundly by others. I would say it is far more unethical to ignore the sentiment of one’s readers – who’s views are plain to see – and whitewash one’s editorial coverage, than massage it into a limp, inaccurate article for the sake of a favour. In this case a favour to a conference organiser.
Sam’s last and final post (again, captured by bloggers) was just an attempt to say he was leaving, given that he had been summarily dismissed by you (can you dismiss a franchisee?) with wafer-thin due process. After such an immediate firing, I think you owed him that last opportunity.
But you removed that post as well.
This made the whole thing even more interesting to people with RSS readers, long memories and blogs. This is Blogging 101, surely?
Now, there are a couple of very interesting themes here, which I won’t level at your door, but would make great articles. The first is the gradual emergence of a kind of ‘cigar-chomping, controlling proprietor’ behaviour amongst some of the most successful blogs. I’m thinking “Citizien Kane 2.0” here. The second is the “Read/Write… and Delete Web” where blogging and user generated content is coming under attack from those who want to control or lock down the conversation. Now that I find myself free, I may well pitch them to a newspaper or magazine. Or just blog them.
Anyway, in closing let me say thanks for letting Sam and I attempt to build TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It’s become clear there was a space for this kind of coverage in the UK. I worked hard to achieve this success, with Sam. I was even still posting at 2am on Tuesday night prior to my wife going into hospital, a fact which has prevented me from responding more fully until now.
You will be interested to know that the traffic to TechCrunch UK & Ireland has gone up about five times over the last few days – though I guess you would consider this to be for the wrong reasons. As someone who has been in the media business for a while, I would say an editor who has increased circulation by that much – without causing world war three or faking the story – is usually worth keeping, not firing. (Here are the Technorati stats).
Lastly, let me just say that I do not wish to make this personal.
I just beg to differ with you, that’s all.
Regards
Mike Butcher
(Former) Co-Editor
TechCrunch UK & Ireland
Skype: mikegbutcher
Blog: http://mbites.com
Labours former Chief Spinmiester is blogging about the World cup on Labour’s web site. Now I’ve seen everything.
But get a load of these horrendours URLs:
http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/index.php?id=97&tx_
ttnews[tt_news]=171&tx_ttnews[year]=2006&tx_ttnews
[month]=06&tx_ttnews[day]=08&cHash=64db4ea2b0
Call that a permalink? Not very Web 2.0 Alistair…
Richard Dreyfuss, Actor and Activist, spoke on “Media and Civic Discourse”
Dreyfus efectively criticised the MSM (mainstream media) for reacting too quickly to events without any thought or substance. “We transmit chapter headings but no chapter. We do not rewards. Broadcast gives only visual no text. There is no details. Our relationship with the Islamic world, our ability to be self righteous are all transmitted by image. We cannot overlook the older problems. If we speak for western civ then we must speak for dissent and debate. But we don’t honour it or allow it. We must have civility in the political debate. We have replaced it with melodrama. If you interrupt or are patronsing you can’t hear what they they say. No matter how sophisticated the technology, if you insist on one view and not allow others then the technology simply allows that mocking faster and more thoroughly.”
Technology can lead us to fatal conclusions without the time to change our minds.
“We no longer offer the differences between republican democracy or Islamic democracy.”
“It’s sold through a technology that does not allow for error.”
He said it was possible to kill black people on sight in the US South for 100 years, prior to civil rights movement.
Image how wrong we can be when we don’t have that time and our political classes are not educated to this scrutiny.
“Now there is a real clock on what damage can be done. No matter how angry you may get, you couldn’t do the damage that you can now, then.”
“In a minute. Now we can create hysteria in a minute.”
“How do you get people to read the good blogging and not the sensational, hysterical blogging.”
He’s talking about journalists reporting the most extreme points of view: “How do you reward journalists for providing the detail and the context?”
How do you create a generation of kids who like the process of learning.
This generation says – we never want to say I don’t know and I’ve changed my mind.
“We are the flap doodles of this culture and we are right now not taking into consideration the power of the tools we are working with.” (Reference to Swift).
Mashup 2.0! Get it? Actually this blog post was created live tonight (hence typos etc) at the second London Mashup event which was all about “‘Personal Publishing, beyond blogging”.
First speaker
As the main organiser Simon Grice gets to talk at the event but also happens to have founded Midentity.com.
He talked about “Personal Publishing” ( he used Dick Hardt‘s style of presenting which is basically to flash words and pictures up on the screen – actually I’ve done this before but without the pictures – much nastier!).
So Grice reckons blogging changed the media business – which is no longer ‘the big cheese.’ So far, so predictable…
People can now publish, store and link. No big trad media firms have (normally) launched user blogs (but now BBC is investing 110m quid into blogs). ITV bought Friends Reunited, Murdoch bought MySpace blah blah. Oh, and E-Tribes runs blogs.
He thinks it’s about what he defines as ‘personal publishing’, not blogging. In this category falls things like user reviews on Amazon, Craigslist, TripAdvisor.com, and user ratings etc. (I think he’s wrong – these people don’t own media from which they profit, so therefore they are not publishers, just contributors – if powerful ones en masse – there is also the issue of whether they own the copyright).
Most people wouldn’t consider themselves as bloggers, but most people create content in the form of pictures, calendar events, comments on sites, etc. (Actually his theory sounds very similiar to Evan Williams’ “casual content“).
Ideally people would publish from one place and then send it to the place they want it to go, rather than have to log in to various sites. Obviously mobiles could be useful for all this.
Second Speaker
Jamie Kantrowitz SVP Marketing and Content for MySpace (who have landed in London recently) talked about ‘ the hard to reach 14-30 year olds’ on MySpace.com
She says:
MySpace is a place where people Express themselves, connect with Friends and discover popular culture.
They debut albums for artists (hold on, didn’t AOL do this first?). They do classifieds, etc. (go see the site).
“We don’t allow people to publish to other places yet…”
They are doing lots of other things like viral videos (a YouTube rippoff? Surely not), and comedian sections.
They ‘connect brands to the audience’ (read: advertising). However, they don’t ‘veil’ advertising, which is probably why it still exists for this marketing savvy audience.
MySpace now has 70m users.
In the UK they have 2.3m registered users (15,000 users a day) here – hence why they have turned up in London. 16-34 age groups. 21 min per session average usage among users. They claim it’s the 8th highest trafficked site in the UK. Hmnnnn…..
They’ve doubled in size in under a year, and are aiming for 98m users in a couple or so.
[Part of the success is down to people's vanity (my words!).] The ‘user profile’ is now a metaphor for their room/apartment they spend hours dressing it up.
The ‘MySpace generation’ has grown up with choice and customisation (time shifting content in iPods, TV etc), social networking online, and is comfortable with creating their own content. And it’s no longer geeky to network online or blog or listen to podcasts. For this demographic, it’s mainstream.
Q&A
“We’ve grown twice as fast since we were acquired by The Man” – Kantrowitz on the lack of user backlash since Murdoch bought MySpace.
Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango: Should we trust bloggers “No” (it’s too easy to blog basically, of course).
Tom Bureau, CNet publisher: “We run a lot of highly regarded publishing sites and the research says our products are trusted more than many old media outlets. So users are becoming very canny about what they see on the web. With blogging, there’s general rule of thumb that blogging is about opinion not news and fact, but the youthful demographic is very savvy about blogs.”
Yoz (from the audience): “Urban Myths archives like Snopes show people still circulate urban myths, but it’s about having the skills to work out what’s true.”
Kantrowitz: “You can’t overthink it. A lot of MySpace is entertainment. Some people do it seriously but it won’t produce the next Matt Drudge. It’s a place to put your life online very simply, so it serves its function. NewsCorp is committed to protecting the brand experience of MySpace – but at the end of the day we’re a business. We’d say we are a trusted network.”
On a show of hands most people at the event said MySpace was a good buy for Murdoch, apart from Paul Fisher from First Capital who said “where’s the business and where’s the money?”
Mark Canter from Broadband Mechanics weighed in with thoughts about ‘structured blogging’. He reckons structured content, containing individual pieces, permalinks, event information etc. Blogging slams all that into one giant text block, but he reckons let’s take that flat text and structure it so that it becomes more searchable etc. [Yeah, because people so want to blog in a structured manner as they have SO much time...]
Someone in the audience pointed out that free-tagging is not very structured. But Grice came back with the point that this is being ‘worked on’ by companies. (He means microformats I think? – Meetup, Upcoming,org)
Kantrowitz said MySpace is being attacked by internal hackers all the time to see if they can hack into it – like, doh! – and talked about how MySpace would probably not get into Open Source (ie structured blogging). She added that over a third of the company is involved in making the site safe (so no naughty pictures etc etc). Also people try to create fake Britney profiles all the time – MySpace takes down copyrighted material – of course they admit it might be “good for viral marketing…”
[At this point my powerbook battery died - Macs eh? - however, I took some notes in "bits" (on paper) so I'll post those later].
Mashup 2.0! Get it? Actually this blog post was created live tonight (hence typos etc) at the second London Mashup event which was all about “‘Personal Publishing, beyond blogging”.
First speaker
As the main organiser Simon Grice gets to talk at the event but also happens to have founded Midentity.com.
He talked about “Personal Publishing” ( he used Dick Hardt‘s style of presenting which is basically to flash words and pictures up on the screen – actually I’ve done this before but without the pictures – much nastier!).
So Grice reckons blogging changed the media business – which is no longer ‘the big cheese.’ So far, so predictable…
People can now publish, store and link. No big trad media firms have (normally) launched user blogs (but now BBC is investing 110m quid into blogs). ITV bought Friends Reunited, Murdoch bought MySpace blah blah. Oh, and E-Tribes runs blogs.
He thinks it’s about what he defines as ‘personal publishing’, not blogging. In this category falls things like user reviews on Amazon, Craigslist, TripAdvisor.com, and user ratings etc. (I think he’s wrong – these people don’t own media from which they profit, so therefore they are not publishers, just contributors – if powerful ones en masse – there is also the issue of whether they own the copyright).
Most people wouldn’t consider themselves as bloggers, but most people create content in the form of pictures, calendar events, comments on sites, etc. (Actually his theory sounds very similiar to Evan Williams’ “casual content“).
Ideally people would publish from one place and then send it to the place they want it to go, rather than have to log in to various sites. Obviously mobiles could be useful for all this.
Second Speaker
Jamie Kantrowitz SVP Marketing and Content for MySpace (who have landed in London recently) talked about ‘ the hard to reach 14-30 year olds’ on MySpace.com
She says:
MySpace is a place where people Express themselves, connect with Friends and discover popular culture.
They debut albums for artists (hold on, didn’t AOL do this first?). They do classifieds, etc. (go see the site).
“We don’t allow people to publish to other places yet…”
They are doing lots of other things like viral videos (a YouTube rippoff? Surely not), and comedian sections.
They ‘connect brands to the audience’ (read: advertising). However, they don’t ‘veil’ advertising, which is probably why it still exists for this marketing savvy audience.
MySpace now has 70m users.
In the UK they have 2.3m registered users (15,000 users a day) here – hence why they have turned up in London. 16-34 age groups. 21 min per session average usage among users. They claim it’s the 8th highest trafficked site in the UK. Hmnnnn…..
They’ve doubled in size in under a year, and are aiming for 98m users in a couple or so.
[Part of the success is down to people's vanity (my words!).] The ‘user profile’ is now a metaphor for their room/apartment they spend hours dressing it up.
The ‘MySpace generation’ has grown up with choice and customisation (time shifting content in iPods, TV etc), social networking online, and is comfortable with creating their own content. And it’s no longer geeky to network online or blog or listen to podcasts. For this demographic, it’s mainstream.
Q&A
“We’ve grown twice as fast since we were acquired by The Man” – Kantrowitz on the lack of user backlash since Murdoch bought MySpace.
Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango: Should we trust bloggers “No” (it’s too easy to blog basically, of course).
Tom Bureau, CNet publisher: “We run a lot of highly regarded publishing sites and the research says our products are trusted more than many old media outlets. So users are becoming very canny about what they see on the web. With blogging, there’s general rule of thumb that blogging is about opinion not news and fact, but the youthful demographic is very savvy about blogs.”
Yoz (from the audience): “Urban Myths archives like Snopes show people still circulate urban myths, but it’s about having the skills to work out what’s true.”
Kantrowitz: “You can’t overthink it. A lot of MySpace is entertainment. Some people do it seriously but it won’t produce the next Matt Drudge. It’s a place to put your life online very simply, so it serves its function. NewsCorp is committed to protecting the brand experience of MySpace – but at the end of the day we’re a business. We’d say we are a trusted network.”
On a show of hands most people at the event said MySpace was a good buy for Murdoch, apart from Paul Fisher from First Capital who said “where’s the business and where’s the money?”
Mark Canter from Broadband Mechanics weighed in with thoughts about ‘structured blogging’. He reckons structured content, containing individual pieces, permalinks, event information etc. Blogging slams all that into one giant text block, but he reckons let’s take that flat text and structure it so that it becomes more searchable etc. [Yeah, because people so want to blog in a structured manner as they have SO much time...]
Someone in the audience pointed out that free-tagging is not very structured. But Grice came back with the point that this is being ‘worked on’ by companies. (He means microformats I think? – Meetup, Upcoming,org)
Kantrowitz said MySpace is being attacked by internal hackers all the time to see if they can hack into it – like, doh! – and talked about how MySpace would probably not get into Open Source (ie structured blogging). She added that over a third of the company is involved in making the site safe (so no naughty pictures etc etc). Also people try to create fake Britney profiles all the time – MySpace takes down copyrighted material – of course they admit it might be “good for viral marketing…”
[At this point my powerbook battery died - Macs eh? - however, I took some notes in "bits" (on paper) so I'll post those later].
As an addendum to the podcast today about corporate blogging, I interviewed Piers Fawkes (pictured) of the New York-based PSFK web sites, which track trends and brands online.
Piers mentioned one new success story: hotels who are using blogs as travel guides to New York…
The mbites.com podcast this week looked at the relatively new phenomenon (at least in the UK) of corporate blogging: blogs run by firms and organisations both as a communications exercise and as a kind of customer relationship thing. We also touched on blogging ‘as publishing’.
The guests (pictured above) were Tim Houghton, managing director of New Media Intelligence, and Dana Gornitzki, editorial consultant, journalist and contributor to the The Globe and Mail newspaper.
Download the MP3 file below (approx 14.5MB, 15 minutes long) or subscribe to the podcast feed and download it automatically into your favourite podcasting software and/or mobile media player device (ok, iPod then) , or even subscribe direct from iTunes.
If you’d like to be a guest on the next mbites Podcast, where we’ll be documenting some of the most interesting new developments in digital and mobile media, contact Mike Butcher.
This is the latest in a series of regular mbites podcasts, kindly hosted at London private members club, Adam Street.
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