My old boss Michael Arrington has made headlines over the weekend when a video of him going mental at OfferPal CEO Anu Shukla at Friday’s Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco emerged online.

Michael’s gripe seems to be that users of free Facebook applications are duped when they sign up for services in return for not having to pay cash for Facebook game goodies. What should have been a reasonable argument about some deceptive advertisers in the industry naturally broke down when Michael basically accused Zygna, OfferPal, and seemingly Netflix of defrauding users…oh, and for good measure he accused Facebook of being complicit.

Anu Shukla responded in kind, going hard against Michael’s accusations. According to Michael, “Shukla went on a tirade, calling my points “shit, doubleshit, and bullshit” (yes, really), but never really addressed the points,” which is a little like the pot calling the kettle black: what the hell did he expect after he basically got up and said that what her company did made them scammers? I would have thought Michael would have learned by now that not everyone rolls over and takes it when you criticize them in public or private, and I’m case in point.

(continues after video)

Taking away the venom of both, there’s truth from both sides. Michael is right in that some offers are at best dubious, at worst a full blown scam. But likewise to suggest that the only thing these businesses trade on, or to suggest that all incentive offers are a scam ignores that good legitimate lead based advertising provides, not only to application developers, but to those who rely on advertising across the board. Not all lead based advertising is evil just because some advertisers are.

The unknown from me, and I’d note Shukla touches on it, is how many of these dubious ads are delivered automatically as part of a network, vs a complicit action on behalf of OfferPal and others to show them. If you want an excellent example of automation, check out Quadzilla’s post on the issue, where he notes that against the same post on TechCrunch appeared a “make $1000 a day” ad…likely one of those get rich on Google scams that have been going around this year.

The solution

In recognizing that at least some of the ads shown by these companies could be defined as “scam” like (as opposed to all or even a simple majority), the better solution isn’t attacking someone at a conference, but lobbying for legislative change or legal intervention that targets the advertiser to begin with.

What surprised me with my Australian hat on is that the ad examples on TechCrunch could be legal to start with, because they wouldn’t be in Australia (and if they’re showing these ads to Australian’s, they’re in deep trouble.) The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken action against similar ads on TV and elsewhere (one recent example) where the disclosure was small to non-existent…on the basis of “false and misleading and deceptive conduct.”

If consumers in the United States are viewing ads of a similar sort, shouldn’t this be a case for the FTC or similar? and if the law doesn’t back that, shouldn’t it be amended to provide that sort of consumer protection?

If Michael is truly passionate on the subject (and watching the video I believe that he is) he’d be better off calling on the FTC to act and not just simply attacking female CEO’s for Friday sport.

Related posts:

1. Areps.at, brunga.at latest in a long line of Facebook scams
2. TokBox Releases Video Chat Via Facebook
3. Facebook Turns Five Today, Offers Free Birthday Gifts

Michael Arrington

Mark Zuckerberg

Marissa Mayer

Stephen Conroy

Ev Williams and Biz Stone

No related posts.

I promised myself I’d stop taking shots at Techcrunch, it’s not healthy and I’ve moved on, but as I choked on my breakfast this morning I’ve decided to relent, because the man who put Ashton Kutcher on stage at what was suppose to be a serious tech conference is now asking that Silicon Valley doesn’t become like Hollywood.

You can’t make this stuff up: my old boss Michael Arrington is not only rallying against Hollywood (as he pisses his pants in excitement over Penn and Teller doing TechCrunch 50 next week), but he’s actually written that he doesn’t want people to pitch him. Did I say already that I’m not making this up?

But like a poorly written business plan, or should I say declaring TechCrunch 50 sold out when your third party ticket outlet was still selling tickets based on your own availability data, Arrington plays the I’m god card, saying ” As Silicon Valley gets bigger, with more strangers, it actually becomes harder to reach the power structure that can make your startup go from a business plan to reality.” Does that make Arrington the Catholic Church?

You see, you should only ever pitch TechCrunch if you have a startup at exactly 1.457944569879458 into its development cycle. Pitching outside of that stage of your development means you want to paint Michael’s house… or something.

People regularly tell me that they miss the old TechCrunch, and despite what Arrington may think I still defend the site to some degree: the market has changed, and TechCrunch has changed with it. But when Michael Arrington writes a post that basically tells people who want to pitch him to fuck off, and that the Valley is turning into Hollywood despite he himself suckling the celebrity teet at the second its dangled in front of him, the plot is lost and TechCrunch has passed from great site to a self imposed cess pool powered on nothing more than Michael’s ego.

Farewell TechCrunch, we loved you so.

Related posts:

1. TC50: Payola or a dodgy site from Ashton Kutcher, I know which I’d pick
2. Mischa Barton is “unbelievable” in her new TV show, claims Ashton Kutcher
3. Blog War! Arrington blames AllThingsD, Valleywag for hate campaign

Former rap star turned startup founder MC Hammer is in serious financial trouble, and may be facing bankruptcy, casting some doubt on user generated dance site DanceJam.

According to reports, MC Hammer owes $671,182 to the IRS and the State of California in three separate tax debts, each of which has resulted in liens being placed on property owned by Hammer and his wife.

MC Hammer has declared bankruptcy previously (in 1996), and it’s not clear from reports whether the new debts may force him to declare bankruptcy a second time. What the do show though is that MC Hammer can’t pay his bills, and that could be representative of even deeper financial issues at play.

The news won’t help struggling startup DanceJam, that launched with much fanfare at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco in September 2007. Hammer is listed as the co-founder of the site, and also holds the position of CSO; primarily his role for the site has been as its public face, a celebrity spokesman of sorts that promotes DanceJam in the media and at events. Having your star co-founder face bankruptcy and possible court time over unpaid tax isn’t a good look for any startup.

DanceJam has struggled to build any significant traffic, managing only 168,000 unique visitors in July according to Compete, and is ranked at 38,726 on Alexa. An angel round of $1 million was backed by Ron Conway, Michael Arrington and others, and Softbank Capital and Rustic Canyon Partners invested over two rounds of $3.5million and $3.92 million each. $8.42 million in total for stats that are lackluster isn’t a positive sign.

Related posts:

1. Why is MC Hammer Suddenly All Over Social Media?
2. For the woman who has everything, a Bling Hammer
3. MC Hammer Dance Flash Mob: Parachute Pants are Back in Style [VIDEO]

Those against the list argue that it’s unfair, and unjustly gives priority to some users rather than others. Even Twitter investor Fred Wilson thinks it should be done better.

Here’s the problem: the presumption is made on the false belief that what you think matters to Twitter. It doesn’t.

Twitter joins a long list of companies that virtually c*^k suck the A-list and others they think will get them ahead than actually really care about what 99.99% of the rest of their users think. FriendFeed has been recommending A-listers since it launched, many who never use the service. Despite regular protests by users, they’ve never changed it. Why? because they don’t give a shit about you either.

Pick your service. RSS Readers and web desktops add TechCrunch as a standard feed to curry favor with Michael Arrington, who recently found God in Hawaii. They don’t recommend your site because you don’t matter to them, and they don’t care about you either.

Is it fair? they don’t care!

I’m sympathetic to the complaints to a point, but complaining does nothing with most of the these companies because they know in the most that you’re not going to stop using them, so you don’t count…you don’t matter.

Want to rage against the machine and change the system? good luck, most people are apathetic and couldn’t care less. The only way to change things if you feel strongly enough is to start your own startup and promise to do it better.

Related posts:

1. Twitter Q&A: Nice Spin, But Lets Focus On Uptime
2. Lets face it, Evan Williams and Biz Stone are blessed
3. $15 Million For Twitter, Lets Hope They Use It For Scaling

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has publicly named Valleywag, and AllThingD as leading the hate campaign that led to him being spat on in Germany, and stalked.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (which owns AllThingsD) Arrington said that while no particular site urged him specific harm, “a handful of tech blogs… have published matter that damaged my site’s reputation, including AllThingsD.com” and Valleywag.

AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, someone we hold in high regard here, denied any connection. “Our site is trying to raise ethical and reporting standards in the tech blogosphere but is in no way responsible for people stalking Michael Arrington. To say so is truly unfortunate on his part,” she said. “I am appalled he is being stalked, which is scary and disturbing, and am sorry for the strife it has clearly caused him and his family.”

I not long ago wrote a post where I’d hoped that Michael looked inward in regard to his current issues; that he continues to blame others is part and parcel of the problem.

Related posts:

1. Michael Arrington: the world isn’t black and white
2. Valleywag to close, become Gawker column instead
3. Owen Thomas leaves Valleywag for NBC

Much of the blogosphere, and even the mainstream press (Asher Moses at The Age has one of the best posts up) is buzzing about a post from TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington where Arrington claims that he’s had enough after being stalked and spat on.

Let me say upfront that the stalking and spitting is most definitely a step to far, that no blogger should have to put up with that, and in that regard he has my sympathies.

But it’s the fine print where the story lets me down. In Michael’s world, people are out to get him, because TechCrunch didn’t write about their startup (on the spitting incident “some unhappy European entrepreneur we didn’t write about”) or because they are jealous and/ or competitors (”my peers will realize that competitive pressures do not give them carte blanche to accuse us and others of literally anything that pops into their head”).

Quite simply, it’s Michael’s attitude to others that is at the very heart of the problem.

My own run in with Arrington is a case in point. I left TechCrunch on a reasonable note, Michael wrote a nice post (since deleted I might add) and I was even doing a couple of guest posts a week for the first month. Then I signed a deal with a small startup that in a very remote way competed with Crunchbase. I honestly believed at the time that it wouldn’t be an issue, the one on one comparison was so minor, and even the day before I got my fuck off email I’d been sending story tips through to Michael, and even working with one of their new writers helping him get established.

The email from Michael claimed that I was out to get them. In Michael’s world, you’re 100% agree with him, or you’re 100% against him. Michael made some other allegations that I’d been negative about TechCrunch to that point; I’d written one, maybe two posts where I disagreed with stuff on TechCrunch, but as anyone around me will testify, to that day I’d always spoken publicly and privately positively about my time working for Michael.

This is but one example, but it’s an example of how Michael operates. I considered him well to that point, and this is the way he treats someone who worked his arse off for him for 12 months, 7 days a week, with one very short break (I left because the pay wasn’t worth the cost on my health). God help the people who really are anti-Arrington, and the lashing they’ve received. Michael pushes people away who can and would support him, and makes enemies of those who want to support him, but may not always agree with him 100% of the time.

But I digress, because there are other clues here as to the root cause of the problem. The spitting incident for example: Michael immediately presumes that it was a startup person who didn’t get a review, but the far more likely reason is Michael’s anti-European startup comments at LeWeb. That those around him didn’t offer assistance shows what many who follow the European blogosphere and startup community were reading: Arrington is hated on the continent because of what he said about them, absolutely nothing to do with a startup reviews or competition.

There’s also this presumption from Michael that people in the United States hate him for similar reasons: not getting a review, or being in competition. That this may hold true for some is a given, but a few don’t make a majority. People aren’t jealous of Michael, in fact why would they be: long hours, lots of stress, and he gets stalked and spat on. If anything, those who still hold any good will towards him (and part of me does, despite our stoush) are actually concerned more than anything: his lashing out has created an atmosphere were he has become hated, as we see now to an extreme point. But lets be clear on the why: it’s not because of TechCrunch the blog, and his competitive posts, or because competitors want to bring him down (which I’d note, really, TechCrunch has few real competitors anyway); the problem stems from the way he deals with others.

I mean this quite sincerely, but I hope that he uses his time off (which I’d note is long overdue anyway), to realize that the world isn’t black and white, and that not everyone is out to get him. I’ve seen the good, generous, kind, engaging and interesting sides of Michael, and I realize the pressure he is under, but change has come to America, and change needs to come to the empire of Arrington. There’s a good guy in there still, I just hope that side wins out. As a commenter on Valleywag pointed out: Om Malik doesn’t attract this negative attention. I hope the good Michael returns, and we’d be all the better off to see it once again. I know I miss that side of him, as do many of those who once knew him, but were pushed away, do.

Related posts:

1. Michael Arrington: Evil Genius
2. Blog War! Arrington blames AllThingsD, Valleywag for hate campaign
3. The man who put Ashton Kutcher on stage claims the Valley shouldn’t be like Hollywood

As we end 2008, the year ahead offers the biggest challenge ever in the history of blogging.

Although blogging dates back to the beginning of the first dot com boom, it truly came of age as the second bubble grew. From the rise of the political bloggers in 2004, blogging became mainstream, and with that came money and commercialism.

Blogging is more than its commercial endeavors, and as a non-commercial platform for networking, global communication and sharing blogging has many great days ahead of it, and may actually boom in 2009 after a dip in popularity over 2007 and 2008 as social networks became a first choice of communications and networking outlet for many.

But the commercial side of blogging is facing a difficult year. The same issues that face the broader Tech and Web 2.0 spheres face blogging: a dearth of VC, declining ad revenues, and even tougher competition as many try to compensate for lower ad revenues by driving even more traffic.

The dangers for commercial blog owners come on a number of fronts, but there’s one trend we’ve already seen begin.

The rise of the Uber Blog

Some may moan at the use of the word uber, so feel free to substitute it with big or large, because the meaning remains the same. An Uber Blog is a blog that combines different content streams into one large blog, with one primary top level url. The Huffington Post is an example I’ve used before. The blending of content can be in related fields, or non related fields; for example, you might blend specialties in tech into the one tech blog.

It has already begun

In a post asking whether the blog network model is dying, I made similar observations on a number of companies, some I’ll repeat here

ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb has gone from a traditional blog network in to the uber blog model. Owner Richard McManus gave away or sold the two blogs in the network, at the same time he was launching new blogs under the ReadWriteWeb brand. The reason given by Richard: a focus on the core brand.

Silicon Alley Insider

Henry Blodget merged the two blogs outside of Silicon Alley Insider into sub-urls on alleyinsider.com. While each blog maintains their own name and heading, they are now all parts of alleyinsider itself as opposed to standalone blogs.

Gawker Media

In between selling blogs, Nick Denton merged Valleywag into Gawker on a sub-url. Valleywag keeps its header and name, but is now a column of Gawker.

b5media

b5media hasn’t yet started blending blogs into larger blogs, but has instead undertaken a variation of the theme: branded portals. Content from b5media’s business and celebrity channels fall under the banner of a larger site, which also acts as a gateway to the content.

Why one large blog?

The reasoning behind the move is remarkably simple: it’s easy to sell ads on one blog vs many blogs, for a couple of reasons. The biggest is simply traffic: having one big blog means increased traffic to the core blog making the sales pitch more appealing. Second, advertisers will often want to target the one blog and not buy the subsidiary blogs; maybe not always, but none the less common in my experience. If you have one big blog with various streams you’ve got better odds of getting high value advertising against all the content.

Expanding outside the niche

Having sub blogs within a large blog, or amalgamating smaller blogs gives commercial blog operators the ability to broaden their content range outside of a specific niche, often with the advantage of not necessarily polluting the core product. The content for example on Silicon Alley Insider and ReadWriteWeb’s sub-blogs is complimentary, and allows both sites to increase content outside the core sites focus, driving growth and new visitors to the product as whole.

Three companies that haven’t blended blogs but could or should

TechCrunch

Michael Arrington followed the typical blog network route with the TechCrunch blogs, launching new sites on new urls. The problem with the network is that it has never produced a hit that has come close to TechCrunch itself. Excluding the country specific sites that site on the techcrunch.com url (except Japan), sites like CrunchGear haven’t delivered (for reference, with a yearly budget that wouldn’t cover one months wages at CrunchGear, we have more traffic according to Quantcast). CrunchGear though isn’t a bad site, it just lacks for eyeballs because it’s not part of TechCrunch itself. Perfect candidate for a sub-blog, like crunchgear.techcrunch.com. The same goes for Mobile and Enterprise. Despite his dislike of me, Arrington is a smart bloke, and I’d bet we see at least one of these sites blended this year, if not all of them.

GigaOm

Om Malik has been buying blogs in a tight market, expanding his network at a time most others aren’t. The unique thing about the network is that gigaom.com doesn’t dominate it, accounting for 31.7% of traffic vs second place TheAppleBlog with 26.9%. However, a number of small blogs would appear to be struggling alone, and would make prime candidates for folding into the leading site.

AOL Weblogs Inc

AOL has continued to go wide, aggressively expanding the network they acquired from Jason Calacanis 4 year ago. AOL does have a couple of obvious strengths: the ability to sell ads across the network, and the leverage of AOL.com to pump new sites. They have already though started to group sites around key brands such as Engadget, and I’d suggest in a tightening market that grouping, being it masthead or subdomains/ sub blogs could come into play in 2009.

Conclusion

In 2009 big will be better. Not big networks of many sites, but big blogs that break out of the narrow niche focus that has been typical of commercial blogging until now, and instead go wide in content but focused on one brand and one url.

The rise of the uber blog will also mark the beginning of the time new media starts to surpass old media. The thing holding back new media to date has been its obsession with niche plays that didn’t naturally lead to scale that sets them up well to compete with old media titans that went wide online as they did offline in print. The new media uber blogs of 2009 and beyond will offer real substitution of old media like we haven’t really seen before, and with lean structures that are best placed to last the recession, could ultimately emerge on top.

Related posts:

1. DogTime: the largest blog network you’ve probably never heard of
2. b5media abandons wide model in favor of uber blogs
3. Surviving the recession: blog networks raise good money in 2009

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington writes today that he’s tired of the running joke that is the PR embargo system and that they won’t be respecting embargoes in the future except from a handful of trusted PR firms.

He claims that TechCrunch never breaks embargoes, which is completely untrue I might add (they broke the Mahalo story embargo this week by about 20 minutes), but then goes moral on the broken system and why they’re no longer going to play unless they get posts exclusively.

I can’t help at first glance but agree with the points he makes: the system is broken, most PR reps do nothing to enforce embargoes and we’ve actually had a policy in place here for some time that we ask PR reps who regularly don’t enforce embargoes on stories we spend time on to remove us from their list (AOL is one company we no longer cover for example).

But that’s not the real intention of the post. Strip away the moral indignation and you get a very clever play to get TechCrunch more content.

You see if most of TechCrunch’s main competitors wrote that they would ignore embargoes in the future, they’d find their inboxes slowly dry up as PR reps exclude them from pre-briefs and embargoed distributions. But TechCrunch is different. PR firms compete for headlines on TechCrunch, and are regularly told by their clients that they must get a post on TechCrunch, and I know this from having spoken to PR reps during my time writing for TechCrunch, and even more recently.

The decision to ignore embargoes by TechCrunch may mean they miss out on a few stories, but the real result will be that TechCrunch will be offered more exclusives, and TechCrunch’s competitors will miss out on a fair shot of running the story at the same time.

Moral indignation as a ploy to get more exclusive stories and drive more traffic. Touche Michael, Touche. Brilliant play. Evil Genius.

Related posts:

1. Michael Arrington: the world isn’t black and white
2. Blog War! Arrington blames AllThingsD, Valleywag for hate campaign
3. Embargoes are not broken, and long may they reign

The default In Quotes choices, not surprisingly, are John McCain and Barack Obama. You can switch out with anyone from George Bush to Bill or Hillary Clinton, even Condoleeza Rice and Nancy Pelosi. And it’s not just limited to the U.S., either — a top-of-screen option lets you toggle over to an edition featuring British, Canadian, or Indian leaders.

In Quotes has a handful of obvious issues that you can click on — abortion, economy, health care — but it also lets you specify your own terms. You can then scroll through the list of quotes or hit the “spin” button to get a random one selected.

The site is a fun way to sift through political coverage specific to topics and candidates of your choosing. It doesn’t, of course, provide you a full spectrum of any person’s views, since you’re seeing only selected snippets from individual stories. A service such as The Boston Channel’s candidate comparison tool does a more all-encompassing job of laying out the candidates’ overall stances issue-by-issue (at least for the U.S. presidential campaign). As long as you use In Quotes with the understanding of what it can and cannot do, though, it’s an interesting tool that adds another layer to the political news experience.

Now, for our idea. The foundation is there. Next, we’d like to see the In Quotes Blogger Edition. Take the same concept, but switch out the players and the topics.

Just imagine the fun side-by-side comparisons could you drum up:

Here’s hoping Google decides to open source the code.

Related posts:

1. Google’s Sidewiki is a bad idea – very bad
2. Google launches another content play: political news aggregator
3. Google Testing “Preferred Sites” Search Customization Tool

For a few

Michael Arrington’s conflicts of interest have been long discussed, and the latest round of navel gazing comes from news that Om Malik (of GigaOm) has taken a senior position at a VC firm while still running one of the biggest sites covering the space. In both cases, Drama 2.0 is right, disclosure doesn’t cut it, because even if they excuse themselves from certain posts, both have a writing team that may still cover the sites/ companies/ startups where a conflict exists. I’d be lying if I denied that others don’t have similar conflicts in blogging, and yet we still need some context: the vast majority of the blogosphere are not investing in startups nor do they hold positions in VC firms. Simply while there may be a problem, a few don’t represent the whole.

The professional class

The root of the problem can be found in the pathways to blogging vs journalism. Journalists are mostly professional journalists, coming to their positions after studying journalism and climbing the greasy pole. Bloggers however don’t come to blogging after studying blogging, they come to blogging instead from different backgrounds, as diverse as the millions of niches that exist in the blogosphere today. That doesn’t necessarily make them lesser writers: you don’t need a degree in journalism to be a writer, but it does mean that the professional class rules and standards that have evolved around journalism over hundreds of years are often foreign to bloggers.

The lack of a professional class of bloggers, at least formally defined (there are professional bloggers) creates a church and state problem. Journalists are journalists first and foremost, but bloggers are often bloggers after entering blogging from another space, and is often the case, while never leaving their original jobs. Very few bloggers are just bloggers, and even those who are successful bloggers can be tempted to invest money or time in the fields they write on. There isn’t popular acceptance of blogging as a career in itself, nor do many bloggers who achieve that status see blogging is their only call in life.

Logic vs Greed

One very strong trait in blogging is one of specialization. Few journalists are taught to specialize in a particular area, and although they may end up covering particular niche areas, if they’ve always been a journalist it has been learned along the way. Bloggers often specialize is a space having come from it, and their specialization has been deepened through blogging. Often, bloggers know little else than the area they specialize in, at least when it comes to making investments.

In Arrington’s case, the conflict of interest issues aside, I’ve previously defended his right to invest in startups because he knows little else, well aside from domaining and being a lawyer, so where else is he going to park his money (and I’d note, even then, that his track record at startup investments is poor). That someone like Arrington, with a day to day understanding of startups would seek to park his money in startups makes financial sense. The same holds some what true for Om Malik as well: when you live and breathe startups, your side investments or activities will logically fall, from a financial perspective, in that space.

And yet, how much money is enough? Arrington has a multi-million dollar business, so its not as if he needs to invest in startups to make money. I don’t know Om’s situation as well, but I’d presume given the success of his blog network that the situation would be the same. Are both a case of simple greed, a desire for more and more money even when both already have it? Why isn’t blogging, and their related businesses enough? Is it in part the lack of respect given to the idea of blogging as a profession?

Perspective

Some in the mainstream media will use what I’ve written so far in this post as yet another reason to bash the blogosphere, but lets put this is perspective. The blogosphere isn’t perfect, but neither is journalism. My favorite line at new media events is that the difference between a blogger and a journalist is that a blogger knows they’re biased, a journalist pretends that they aren’t, and it’s very true. That some journalists have the temerity to stand before an audience and say that blogging is the great unwashed and that professional journalism is the last port of call for the truth makes me laugh even writing the line. Bias and potential conflicts of interest are thick on the ground in journalism. It could be Rupert Murdoch deciding who he’s going to back for President or Prime Minister this round, and his papers towing the line. It could be the magazine writer fired for writing a negative review of a sponsors product. It could be the political commentator who is paid to talk at political events because they are a favorite on one side or the other due to the bias in their political coverage, or the journalist who attends an event for free, and gets plowed with food and drink for positive coverage. Conflict of interest issues, and bias as both a directly related cause, or a sub-set leading back is just as prevalent in journalism than it is in blogging, and maybe even more so. That a few bloggers at the top are so blatant in crossing the lines may be a little unique, but that doesn’t mean that the blogosphere is somehow collectively a million times worse than traditional journalism because of it.

The challenges in this post face journalists in the same way they face bloggers, and as heritage media declines, and bloggers offer a level of competition never seen before in the space, those conflicts and issues in journalism are only going to get worse.

Solutions

The first blog appeared in 1996, and blogging really only came of age in the United States in 2004. When I launched The Blog Herald in 2003, I never once thought I’d make any money from it. There was little to no money in blogging, Adsense didn’t exist, and no sane person would have predicted what blogging has become today. The reality is, to some extent, that blogging is the wild west of journalism. Professional journalism has taken hundreds of years to get to where it is today, hundreds of years to construct rules and accepted norms. And yet along the way, and even today, it still faces challenges. Yellow journalism wasn’t an issue created by blogs, and conflicts of interest and bias in reporting are still alive and well despite the rules and expectations within the profession. Blogging doesn’t have those rules, but it has come a remarkably long way in a short time. That we are simply having this conversation is proof positive that blogging is evolving and that we can discuss these issues, and consider the challenges presented, and possibly consider some of the solutions.

The top of the blogosphere today looks more and more like professional journalism. The lines are blurring as top blogs become media companies, and newspapers embrace blogging. The us and them mentality for many is breaking down, and as it does, both cross pollinate. We’re seeing the solution here already. Blogging is young enough and smart enough to be open to taking on external ideas to improve its lot, and that may well include the conflict of interest standards that act in theory within professional journalism. Not perfectly applied by any stretch, but more and more so as the top blogs get bigger. The thing that some new media haters in heritage media won’t like is that before our eyes, the notion of bloggers is slowly being lost, as new media is embraced by all, and for those blogging for a living, or for top blogs, we all become journalists.

Conclusion

There’s some truth in what Drama 2.0 says, that ultimately professional bloggers will need to decide between being journalists or something else. We are seeing a sea change, one where we have created jobs that didn’t exist only 5 years ago, and one where in the coming years the idea of being a full time blogger will be something to aspire to, and a far more common job than it is today. The time will come where blogging is the be all for those working full time in the space, but we still aren’t quite there. We may also never get there, as the lines between traditional journalism and blogging merge.

Conflict of interest is not a crisis in blogging, even if we recognize that it is an issue. Collectively we should discuss the issue, and maybe our discussions can help define standards and best case rules that others can follow, but ultimately the final decision will come down to the market. Those that put themselves into such positions take a risk, and where they are not able to properly balance their conflicts and their blogging suffers, so to will readers leave, because you can only get away with these sorts of activities for so long in the blogosphere. Like it or not, accountability for your actions is far stronger in blogging than it has ever been in heritage media.

(image credit: Wired, Amazon)

Related posts:

1. Media Bloggers Association launches blogging insurance program
2. Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging
3. Passion and the business case [blogging 101]

Now in terms of market opportunities, Yammer might go well, at least in targeting those companies that can’t be bothered installing a local install of Laconi.ca. Corporates like safe things, there’s a business plan attached, and presuming it will scale, most large corporations will buy anything. And it’s not as though they’ll fall over trying, because unlike most other startups presenting, they’re not really a startup in their own right, instead being a side project of Geni.

Valleywag has an interesting take on how Yammer won, but given I wasn’t at the event or involved, I don’t know the truth there, even if I do remember Arrington froffing at the mouth in excitement at the slightest mention of Geni in the past. My only observation is that if TechCrunch50 was focused on innovation and interesting ideas, it failed in picking Yammer, because taking microblogging and giving it a corporate veneer doesn’t yell original or innovative to me.

So now we know what it takes to win TechCrunch50: an old idea in a fresh coat of paint. If you’ve ever wanted to received a ridiculously large play check from Arrington for $50,000 in front of a crowd of people with serious hangovers (well, Calacanis anyway), here’s some ideas you can use to win next year. Tell em I sent you

Friender (Corporate FriendFeed)

FriendFeed for people who share a corporate email address. The service allows you to share links from the corporate intranet, and has a built in censorship tool for naughty words, such as innovation and original.

Blogoporate (Blogger for corporates)

What better way to practice astroturfing and spam than on your own corporate blog network. Blogoporate comes with support for Blogoporate Friend Connect, so you’ll never feel alone in your startup office of 5.

Fitbitmer (corporate Fitbit)

Big brother becomes a reality as this new whizbang dongle tracks your working day. Slacking off on the job, taking 2 minutes extra for lunch? Now corporate overlords can save millions through docking pay and on the spot firings

Seesmicer (corporate Seesmic)

What office isn’t complete without a daily message from the CEO, followed by 150 videos of corporate grovelling. The perfect communications tool for the 21st century.

Anything Peter Thiel tells you to make

This is what I’d put my money on.

If you have any ideas for next year you’d like to share with the community, leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. TechCrunch50: $3.5 million x Disingenuous
2. Social media services – the farm team league for Facebook ideas
3. Finding ideas, getting it right [Blogging 101]

As well as affecting people on the floor, the biggest losers from the WiFi problems are the 100 companies in the demo pit, who from one account I have are furious, particularly given that unlike the presenting companies, they had to pay to be at the conference.

Mixed reports on EVDO and 3G access. Some demo pit companies do have cards, but coverage isn’t great. The issue being that when you’re demonstrating a web startup, having access to the internet to demonstrate your product is a necessity.

Here’s some of the feedback via Twitter

“Demoing Powerset at TC50, in between Zivity (good location) and Wixi. But still no WiFi? Wishin’ I were at DEMO.” Mark Johnson on a stall in the demo pit.

“tc50 demopit is just a pit right now. No wifi, no demo.” matteofabiano

A wry observation: “Funny. There are more tweets about the broken WiFi at TC50 than about the actual event… ” schillmoeller

There does appear to be some good news for companies in the demo pit though:

“There’s good news & bad news. Since the wifi at #TC50 was down most of today, today’s Demo Pitters are invited back tomorrow. Yay!/Ugh! “ J-Strizzle

Even Scoble couldn’t stay on message

“I hear that at Demo the wifi works. Not here at TC50.”

As one email to me put it: “I know the attention this amateur hour gets is frustrating the hell out of them.”

If you have any thoughts on the debacle or inside information, leave a comment, or send us an email. We’ll also consider running any anonymous rants.

(source image credit: Magerleauges)

Related posts:

1. TC50 v DEMO: The startups are the losers
2. T-Mobile Sues Starbucks Over Free AT&T WiFi
3. McDonalds to offer free WiFi in Australia

Lets start on the positives. TechCrunch40 last year rocked, and I’m willing to bet that TechCrunch50 this year will be better again. In some ways I’m sad I won’t be attending. It’s a top notch event that highlights some great startups, and offers a wealth of networking opportunities. The TechCrunch staff also work their backsides off in the lead up to the event, so it has the heart and soul Arrington feels the need to share in his post. Indeed, I still don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of people work as hard as the TechCrunch team for last years conference, and that includes everyone for the extremely talented Heather Harde, through to the ever reliable interns.

But here’s my issue, and this is what I told Stone when I was asked: if this is really all about startups, and doing the best for startups, they wouldn’t be running it the same time as DEMO, and they wouldn’t be trying to “kill” DEMO as Jason Calacanis so nicely puts it. If they were serious about putting startups first, they would be focused only on creating more opportunities for startups to be discovered, and they’d allow their event to stand on its own merits without the need to constantly trash talk the opposition. Are we not better off as a web community having both DEMO and TechCrunch50?

Then there’s the profit. Stone says its $3.5 million. How charitable that in helping startups the profit could be as high as $3.5 million (I’d think it’s closer to $2 million, but it’s still 7 figures). I don’t begrudge them a profit, and indeed good on them for being able to turn a million each for both Arrington and Calacanis in the split. But here’s the thing: if it’s not about Payola and all about the greater good, isn’t it grossly disingenuous to be playing the charity/ anti-Payola line when all TechCrunch50 does is slightly shift the goalposts on the money coming in. Demo pit attendees pay…they pay half, but if they want two on the stand they pay the $3k. There’s 100 of those. Then there’s the sponsors. Arrington tells Stone that the sponsors get no special access to the startups, but does anyone seriously think the sponsors pay to get their logo on a screen? I haven’t checked the speakers rostrum/ judges panel, but if there wasn’t some cross over I’d be surprised. They must get something from paying up, VC’s are in the business of making money, not handing it over for no return to line Jason’s and Arrington’s pockets. Maximizing access to startups? $2995 a ticket if you want to watch, and there’s 1000+ attendees. Allow for some of them to be free press passes, but still, access remains the domain of the wealthy few, not necessarily the best people to pitch to.

Prize Money: a paltry $50,000. Embarrassingly low given the profit the event delivers.

If they were really doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, if they really believed that the DEMO model is fatally flawed, and if they really wanted to put on the BEST show for startups, they’d run the event at break even. They’d run the DEMO pit for free, they cut the cost of the tickets, or better still they’d hand pick the audience so as to maximize the best possible group for the presenting companies to pitch to, after all, isn’t charging $2995 for a ticket audience payola?

Of course, they’ll never do any of that, but as long as they run around playing the destroy DEMO/ best for startups marketing pitch, they do themselves a grave disservice. Every time DEMO is trash talked, it appears to most sane people to be more of an insecurity from those doing the trash talk, than any real reflection on the model. Put on a great event, but STFU with the DEMO hating and let your actions in the delivery of the event speak for itself.

Related posts:

1. TC50: Payola or a dodgy site from Ashton Kutcher, I know which I’d pick
2. TC50 v DEMO: The startups are the losers
3. Winning ideas for TechCrunch50 2009

Scale is important when offering any service like this, which is why we’ve teamed up with Tradevibes for the service as opposed to doing it by ourselves.

As I wrote in my review of companies in this space June 12, Tradevibes appeal comes from its collaborative approach to data, being a focused wiki from the start that values user contributions as it is built on them. That collaborative model extends to data sharing with other sites, for example Mashable has a similar deal in place with Tradevibes, so contributions from QBase will also appear on Mashable’s service, as their contributions will be visible here.

There was some emotion involved with going with a product like this, however a compelling pitch and product ultimately won the day for Tradevibes. It is not an attack on anybody else, despite the delusional private rants of one competitor preceding this announcement. I have long preached that the build it and they will come days have past, and Tradevibes is a company that gets it, while others are completely clueless. I also have faith in Tradevibes ability to move forward in a competitive space, with investors such as Dave McClure and Ron Conway backing the company.

Please feel free to visit QBase and register if you haven’t already (you sign up for a Tradevibe’s account, so you can use it across any Tradevibes derived property). Naturally you can edit or add information about any company, including your own, and you can also add links to stories on companies as you see fit (no spam please, but context is perfectly fine). If you do need to place company information on your blog or website check out the easy to use widget on each page. You’ll be seeing them regularly here on The Inquisitr (not every post, but where they fit and add to a story), and it’s a handy feature.

Related posts:

1. What was hot on QBase last week
2. What was hot on QBase Last Week + Enter the Fever Pitch Competition
3. What was hot on QBase last week + QBase Exchange