Mike Arrington And Linelessness

David Carr has done a good job outlining the specifics of the TechCrunch/CrunchFund mess, and raising the spectre of self-serving publicity:

As business reporters, we are often pressed up against the glass, watching as others take risks, make investments and build companies. We are observers, not players. But the froth and money sloshing around has reached a whole other level, and looks enticing no matter what side of the glass you are on.

Michael Arrington kicked a hole in the glass. A former lawyer and investor who founded TechCrunch in 2005, he told his bosses at AOL in April that he was going to continue to edit the site, but resume investing in some of the companies TechCrunch covered.

When criticism followed, he said he would fully disclose any conflicts, and besides, he never saw himself as a journalist anyway, even though he often broke news. AOL swallowed hard and said Mr. Arrington was free to do what he wanted. Thus emboldened, he spent the following months both investing and directing coverage.

TechCrunch is capable of tearing the limbs off a baby company, but it’s been a generally nurturing place for start-ups when Mr. Arrington has skin in the game. On April 1, he invested in Supyo, a video-chat start-up created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the pair who changed the world with Napster.

Fourteen days later, M G Siegler, one of the TechCrunch’s highly regarded writers, wrote: “The new project is nothing if not interesting. Think Chatroulette done right.” Mr. Arrington’s involvement was duly noted.

On April 4 TechCrunch wrote a generally positive post about Milk, a mobile development lab created by Kevin Rose, one of the co-founders of Digg, the social news site. On April 26, a round of funding closed, which included Mr. Arrington’s investment, and his involvement was disclosed at that time in an article about the funding.

On June 30, Mr. Arrington invested in LikeALittle, a location-based flirtation site for young people. On Aug. 1, they got a favorable product announcement along with a video visit to their office in a home in Palo Alto where an employee talked about what an “awesome” workplace it was..

We know these things because Mr. Arrington was mostly transparent about the conflicts. But how many articles about equally interesting competitors did not get written?

All sorts of arguments can be made pro and con about the general and specific issues — Arrington is a good guy/bad guy, discloses all/conceals a great deal, everyone does it/no one should be able to do that — but something tectonic is being overlooked.

The subtext of this brouhaha is the incipient linelessness of new media. Arrington pushed the line, or jumped over the line, or erased the line. What line? Are there any lines left? Can there be lines?

I personally subscribe to the notion that potential conflicts of interest should be exposed, but I don’t believe that ends favoritism. My disclosure that company X is a client in a story about compnay X doesn’t mean that over the course of a given year I will not have written more about client X than non-client Y. It’s only natural that I would know more about a company that is a client, and less about companies that I am not in touch with.

And how would such an ‘imbalance’ of coverage be tracked? All press releases aren’t objectively the same, and obviously some judgment has to be made, but they can’t even all be read: there are too many.

Even at a old school bastion of journalism like the NY Times, editors and authors have to pick what stories to follow, out of the infinity of potential stories in the universe. There is no infallible, objective mechanism to pick stories, one that is fair and unbiased in some truly general and provable sense.

The reality is that all organizations (and individuals) have to settle for extreme approximations of what a hypothetically unbiased approach to news coverage would produce, if such a thing actually existed.

Arrington’s heresy in all this is the simple fact of owning stock in the companies that he and others at Techcrunch are covering. This was old news years ago, when Mike was a small entrepreneurial blogger, and even later as the head of a go-go tech blogging company. But now that AOL has purchased TechCrunch, and then invests in CrunchFund, old school media takes another look and cries foul.

So, it comes down to this: Are there still lines that constrain ‘journalists’ from taking sides in the marketplace? Obviously, the NY Times has a rulebook that they require their employees to follow, as do many other organizations, that spells out their position: thou shalt not invest in companies in the industry you cover. The Times created that rule book in a time before blogs, social media, and the mess we live in today.

Mike has no such rulebook. And he says he’s not a journalist, either. He’s something new, living outside the lines. In fact, his existence suggests there are no lines. When anyone can write and reach millions without being anointed by an old school, ‘there are lines’ sort of organization like the NY Times, then there are no longer any lines. Someone like Arrington is, in this lineless universe, just a chameleon who used the trappings and style of publishing to achieve economic influence on the tech start-up market, and then has cashed out on that, exploiting a power vacuum. It’s an identity conflict, with his detractors saying he must act like a journalist, and Mike saying, ‘no thanks’.

But it wasn’t journalists that created Arrington, but the tech scene: a tight-knit, self-absorbed community of investors, entrepreneurs, and wannabes, all desperate for ink, share-of-mind, and a chance for the brass ring. So many hanging on every word printed in TechCrunch, trying to get written up, hoping for a leg up in the steeplechase that is the central animating goal of the tech scene.

Maybe the deep libertarianism of the West Coast tech scene is a factor here, also. The ideology that the elite should be allowed to do whatever, and that there is no need for regulation or lines.

One last thought: It’s strange to recall that Arrington was the guy to break the news in 2010 about Angelgate, a meeting of various angel investors who were engaged in cartel-like behavior, if the stories are to be believed. This was a case where he thought lines had been crossed, possibly into outright criminal behavior.

But in the current TechCrunchgate, the lines aren’t about illegality: this is a story about identities, and the communities that create them. An identity conflict, a culture conflict, and one that might end with a truly Shakespearean close, like Titus Andronicus, with nearly all the dramatis personae lying in a heap on the stage.

related

• Is blog TechCrunch unraveling in public? (cnn.com)
• TechCrunch as we know it may be dead (cbsnews.com)
• Arrington Stepping Down From… What Role At Techcrunch? (stoweboyd.com)

6 September 2011 24 Permalink

Topolsky (Surprise) Leaves AOL

This is no surprise: Topolsky has left AOL, and Joining Jim Bankoff at SB Nation:

Joshua Topolsky, This is my next project

Of course, the natural question I’m sure a lot of people have is: why SB Nation? The easy answer is that the people at SB Nation share my vision of what publishing looks like in the year 2011. They think that the technology used to create and distribute news on the web (and mobile) is as important as the people who are responsible for the content itself. And that’s not just pillow talk — SB Nation is actively evolving its tools and processes to meet the growing and changing needs of its vast editorial teams and their audience communities. They’re building for the web as it is now.

I am very interested in here what they think the web is now.

I know Jim Bankoff reasonably well: he was the exec at AOL that bankrolled one of my favorite disasters, a project I worked on with Greg Narain called Nerdvana. Bankoff is incredibly sharp, and once he was pushed out by Falco, our project died the death of a thousand cuts.

SB Nation seems smart, and, Lord knows, the media space has a long way to go to catch up to our new expectations here in the post-everything economy. Topolsky is a smart guy, but I would really like more details.

I wonder what this means about the politics in AOL? Huffington shows up, and is put in charge instead of Topolsky. And the unending, high-friction interaction with Arrington at Techcrunch was yet another incentive to fly,

Source: joshuatopolsky.com

3 April 2011 2 Permalink

Tim O’Reilly Interviews Bill Gates

Tim O’Reilly posted his pre-interview thoughts about his interview of Bill Gates at the Mix conference, here, and the full transcript of the discussion is buried in this page, at Microsoft’s site.

There are a few places were Tim seems to try to dig into the particulars of Microsoft’s Web 2.0 meanderings, like this question about the possible directions for Outlook:

TIM O’REILLY: So how much is that part of your strategy? We talked yesterday a little bit about Outlook and how it seems like there’s this enormous potential to sort of blow away really the crude offerings of the social networking sites, because at the end of the day Outlook for many people is a reflection of their real social network, rather than this kind of, hey, are you my friend, will you be my friend; you can actually tell who you communicate with.

BILL GATES: Well, I think we’re not going to turn Outlook into MySpace.

TIM O’REILLY: I’m not talking about MySpace, but -

BILL GATES: You’d actually like it to be this idea of your contacts, who you communicate with. There’s a lot of rich data that Outlook sees that can help you in your communications, and that definitely is something we want to do driving forward. The idea of making it easy to see schedules, see multiple schedules, the traffic kind of activity you had, we have some of that in this next version of Outlook, but we could go a lot further in the idea of the communication network.

TIM O’REILLY: And you have some of that in the live contact feature in Messenger as well.

BILL GATES: Right, so that if someone updates the contact, then it automatically can come down onto your local store.

But, I wonder, why doesn’t Microsoft try to turn Outlook into the world’s most potent business social network, instead of just a Plaxo replacement? It staggers the mind that Gates turns away from a big, and tangible opportunity (one that could lead to who knows what), and instead continues the endless strategy to win all wars with all competitors. In this one interview, we wander from OS strategies, to handhelds, tablet PCs, the iTunes/iPod dominance of the music business, games, navigation in cars, and everywhere else.

Microsoft continues to define its strategy as winning all of these critical battles, and gaining leverage through that. But Microsoft cannot possibly win all of these wars, and it is certainly falling behind in areas where it can’t afford to lose. The recent announcement of Vista slipping past Xmas is just one glaring example. Sony mismangement of the PS3 is giving Microsoft breathing room in the games area, but, as Om Malik recently pointed out, that is more than countered by the near monopoly of Apple in the music player space, and the likelihood of Apple’s dominance in the ongoing battle for the livingroom.

But more interestingly, the inheritors of all the cool Web 2.0 apps companies — Google, Yahoo, and eBay — are moving at a blinding rate to sew up the future. Del.icio.us, Flickr, Writely, and the other legion apps companies, have built what may be an unassailable innovative lead that Microsoft, middle-aged and slow-footed, may not be able to close, no matter how many times they reorganize engineering management. Google is moving forward with a vision of the Web OS, and planning how to get that onto our devices; Microsoft continues on with a smaller, parochial vision, of getting Office onto the Web, and holding onto all those paying customers in companies everywhere. The new offering from AjaxWrite, pushed Mike Arrington to ask the question “Will things like AjaxWrite have an impact on Microsoft’s Office revenues over time? Yeah, it must. Even so, Bill Gates says that he just doesn’t understand our infatuation with thin client versions of Word.” Mike had lunch with Gates at Mix, and was struck by his unresponsiveness to this market dynamic:

[from So I Had Lunch With Bill Gates Today]

I asked a few questions, specifically about what Microsoft’s plans are around an online version of Office. Bill responded at length without really giving an answer. He did say that he thought people were too infatuated with the thought of an online version of Office, but that they were really focused on the idea of cloud storage for office files. This fits right in with their strategies around Office Live, of course…

I think it represents an obsession with big picture, dinosaur, Soviet-style five year plans to conquer the world, while smaller, more agile Web 2.0 companies are nibbling away the edges of the Empire by rolling out apps that will support migration from the big cash cows that Microsoft is basically banking on: Office and Windows.

The stock market answered the slip in Vista’s release by paying 72 cents less a share for Microsoft stock, now at $27.02: a 3% loss. I am predicting — despite what the pundits say — that continued erosion of the core of their business will lead to an additional 20% or higher drop in that stock price before year’s end.

Too many battles to win means that they will surely lose. Their fate is to become the IBM of the 21st century, and to be eclipsed by some upstarts who did not even exist when they were in their heyday. It’s not a terrible fate: IBM is still a large, and successful company. But they aren’t the dominant force in technology that they once were, back when mainframes were a hot new idea. In the future, we will think that desktop applications suites were a neat idea once upon a time, too.

[Update: 2:47pm ET 24 Mar — Mary Jo Foley points out that now Office is going to be delayed as well, so things are actually worse for Microsoft than I reported this morning.

27 March 2006 Permalink

Edgeio Write Up

So Mike Arrington’s startup (along with Keith Teare, formerly of RealName) has been leaked and reported on by Rob Hof. I had some inside dope on that, but was sworn to secrecy. It looks like we are going to see an insidious dribble campaign over the next few weeks, leading up to the planned end of Feb launch.

Here’s what Rob says:

[from Edgeio Edges Toward Launch—and a Clash with E-Commerce Giants? by Rob Hof]

Edgeio is doing just what its tagline says: gathering “listings from the edge”—classified-ad listings in blogs, and even online product content in newspapers and Web stores, and creating a new metasite that organizes those items for potential buyers.

The way Edgeio works is that bloggers would post items they want to sell right on their blogs, tagging them with the word “listing” (and eventually other descriptive tags). Then, Edgeio will pluck them as it constantly crawls millions of blogs looking for the “listing” tag and index them on Edgeio.com.

Also, Edgeio sends a trackback to the blog, providing a way for the blogger to go to Edgeio and modify the listing, adding other tags such as “autos” and other data that will further help the listing appeal to potential buyers.

Buyers get some interesting tools on Edgeio, too. You can search by geography, naturally. In fact, there’s a cool slider that lets you zero in on a particular city. If there aren’t enough listings, you can move the slider to a wider geographic area. Buyers also can filter listings by tag and see information on the blogger or publisher of the listing. Ultimately, buyers—if they choose to register as Edgeio members—can contact the seller directly by email.

Ad listing in blogs? Who does that? Today, almost nobody. And that’s why this idea could work at all: Teare said the tag “listing” is found only about 10 times a day on millions of blogs, so it’s an ideal, clean tag with which to create a unique index of “listings from the edge.”

Edgeio also plans a reputation system.

Wild. So this is the realization of the microformats/structured blogging idea: people can create posts, indicate — by a tag, or other microformat gesture — that the post includes a classified listing, and a service like Edgeio can scoop up that information and place it in a directory.

For example, I could tag a post with these markers — “Reston+VA+20194” “Edgeio” “Listing” “Leather+Couch” “$500+or+best+offer” — and an Edgeio-like system could do what you might expect with that metadata. [Note: I have not had a demo of Edgeio, specifically, yet, so this may not be the exact way that it works.]

Buyers could shop through these tags, and following the trackbacks to the original posts, although Edgeio obviously wants to control the sale, which is actually easier for all parties anyway.

So, a sweet idea, and one that should further erode the classified ads revenue stream for newspapers everywhere. The real competition is for Web 1.0 contraptions like eBay and Craig’s List. The newspapers have already lost, and just keep on doing the same old nonsense, like a chicken’s body running around the barnyard after the head has been cut off. Edgeio is just going to accelerate that death.

9 February 2006 Permalink