14 comments

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  Daniel Gibbons

  1 year ago

  It really doesn't matter, except that these kinds of incredibly childish faux feuds push the audience for TechCrunch and Wired even further down market. If you drive huge numbers of monthly page views from the kind of audience that simply likes to troll about and attack each other in the comments, you'll end up with a large site that's vastly underperforming its revenue potential because it's not an audience that's receptive to or wanted by advertisers. That seems so different from Arrington's apparent goal of creating a credible business / technology news outlet that can compete with and displace the incumbents.
  
  The irony for me is that the apparent conflicts Wired cites are pretty much a non-issue. There probably aren't going to be hyper-critical posts about DanceJam on TechCrunch, but it's not like he's on the board at Google and letting that shape his analysis of the Yahoo! / Microsoft debacle. The real issue is that TechCrunch seems to default to the low / easy road instead of stepping up and embracing its opportunity to make Wired and even more mainstream business publications irrelevant. That this debate has descended into a "he started it / she started it" pissing match that appeals only to a tiny minority of TC's potential audience makes it still more embarrassing.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  That's a fair point, Daniel -- and the fact that I find it amusing
  perhaps isn't the best gauge for whether it's a good thing to do from
  a business standpoint. At the same time, however, one of the appealing
  things about blogs as a source of news and commentary is that they are
  run by human beings, and occasionally that shows through -- if they
  just turn into replicas of stuffy print magazines then where's the fun
  in that?
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  Daniel Gibbons

  1 year ago

  Also a fair point, and the last thing I want to see is blogs turning into Business Week 2.0. But the human qualities I respond to are intelligence, strength of character, tolerance, empathy and generosity. These are pretty much the opposite of the personas that are in vogue on the tech blogs. Telling someone to f**k off on Twitter and then publicly saying that it can be excused because of extreme drunkenness? It's like kids in high school boasting about how wasted they got at the party where they sat in a corner with a bottle of peach schnapps they stole from mom's liquor cabinet.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Nice analogy -- although in my case it was lemon gin :-) Still, I
  think you are right. The unspoken point, of course, is that slinging
  mud or ad hominem attacks draws traffic -- Mike knows it, and I'm sure
  Wired knows it too. Not as many people are likely to go out of their
  way to read a post that is balanced or fair, and full of tolerance and
  sympathy. Sad but true.
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  Daniel Gibbons

  1 year ago

  Probably beating a dead horse here, but I think it is important to draw out that point about traffic.
  
  If you're relying on remnant inventory through ad networks, then you could argue that traffic is all that matters. But if you want to get serious about selling your own advertising at much higher rates, then it's far better to capture a really strong audience that's there because they buy in to the content, not because they like watching the train wreck.
  
  So in the long run I think TechCrunch is sacrificing credibility AND revenue on the altar of low quality page views.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Another good point. You are now three for three :-)
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  calvin pearson

  1 year ago

  mean-spirited jab? you must be kidding, right? well, no, you're serious. over the last several months i've read many "jabs" (mean-spirited or others in this space.) it's your right as an arm-chair opinion-meister to weigh in as you see fit. but outside of the "butt munch" tag (and i don't know whose call that was) questions about arrington's coverage is fair game.
  
  at the same time, his "fuck you" tweet was a heck of a lot more mean-spirited than the wired piece. there's no place for that sort of gutter languague.
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  leigh

  1 year ago

  It's interesting. The transparency of the Web has brought the conflicts and the bias to the forefront in a way they never have been before. The fact is that media bias based on relationships, whether they be personal, advertising and/or business, have always existed. The PR machines and lobbies that affect what we see and are influenced by on a daily basis are well known facts. Dare I bring up Noam Chomsky here, but to suggest that big media is the lovely unbiased third party opinion is just a load of crap.
  
  Should people report on start ups where they invest, know someone etc? I think some standards should be put in play that at least a third party does the review vs. the individual who has invested but if everyone who knows personal or invests personal in any given start up wasn't allowed to comment, pretty much techmeme would have no content.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  I was thinking about that too, Leigh -- and Larry Dignan had a good
  post about the same topic at ZDNet
  (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8817), in which he talked about how at
  least with the blogosphere, conflicts of interest and other sorts of
  interpersonal matters that affect what gets written are relatively
  transparent, and therefore easier to either discount or keep in mind
  when the content is being read. I see that as an overall plus.
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  MG Siegler

  1 year ago

  A truly great title.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Thanks, MG.
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  antje wilsch

  1 year ago

  I agree, made me laugh. I can see a furious write-off.
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  Ben

  1 year ago

  There is no way Wired is going to win this battle. First, as the more established player they seem like a bully. Second, as the more established player they don't have the luxury of being as brutally honest as Arrington and don't have such a personal connection to influentials in the blogosphere. Regardless of how much people actually like Mike, a lot of his readers (me included) can't help but feel a little connected to him since we read his (mostly) authentic voice every day, which makes him much more sympathetic than a more impersonal publication like wired.
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  JoeDuck

  1 year ago

  Great post title Matt -
  
  Both authors driven (perhaps in some part subconciously) by our human tendency to watch fights more than reasoned debate. On TV, blowhards like Sean Hannity are watched more and paid much more than Charlie Rose who does some fo the best TV journalism in decades. The slope is steep and we are all sliding down fast, so might as well enjoy it.
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