Soap Opera 2.0, starring Blognation founder Sam Sethi, ended with a blockbuster today: Sam lays all the blame for the failure of the British blog network at the feet of TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington, who split with Sethi in a nasty and public way exactly a year ago, an irony that Sam notes in his post on the end of his dream. Like Techfold, I have to say this is one of the most mealy-mouthed and insincere posts I’ve seen from an alleged business person since Conrad Black stopped blogging.
I’m not sure which is my favourite part — the part where Sethi admits that he lied to his own staff about funding being imminent (which ex-staffer Oliver Starr described in an earlier installment of this saga), but blames that lying on Mike Arrington? Or the part where he says he has called in Scotland Yard to investigate the term sheet that was leaked to Mike, the one that allegedly caused the VC to panic and pull the funding?
I just can’t decide. It’s like deciding which part of the train wreck is the best, or which accident victim is worse off. The only thing that’s clear is that Sam doesn’t bear any of the blame for what happened — anything wrong he did was something he was forced to do by Mike Arrington (Mike has posted a response here). What a graceless and insipid way to end something. If Sam was trying to win any support or respect with his post, he has failed completely.