Well, it seems that Twitter is good for something: I watched a blog war (or at least a skirmish) blow up in real time via the “micro-blogging” app that just got funded by Fred Wilson at Union Square. First, Robert Scoble said that he was in an all-staff meeting at the company — and that Mike Arrington “got a lot of things wrong” in his recent post on the status of Podtech.
To this, Mike responded on his Twitter — directly to Scoble — that:
“If I got the story wrong, its because John wasn’t being clear in how he describes the company.”
and
“It’s bullshit to call this out publicly. I assume the off-record conversation is now fair game for TechCrunch.”
Fair game for this latest post by Mike, in which he writes that the previous post was one “Podtech pleaded with me to write, to counter the massive negative publicity they’ve been getting around the blogosphere,” and that he agreed to write it “after two phone conversations with Furrier and some independent digging.” I actually thought that Mike was pretty fair in that initial post.
In any case, he says now that:
“I’ve kept most of my personal opinions about Podtech to myself so far. I haven’t for example, said that I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.”
Ouch. He also says that:
“I write stuff how I see it, which is not the same thing as what the companies involved necessarily want to see. Never confuse TechCrunch with your PR or marketing team.”
Game on. Should be a fun TechCrunch party tonight 🙂
Update:
In a Twitter post this morning, Scoble says:
“I’m tired of fighting with people in public about it. We’ll have the ultimate laugh if we make PodTech profitable … I certainly have lots of opportunities and would have left long ago if things were dire.
We ARE going through turbulence, though … and nearly every startup I know has gone through changes in direction, unstatisfactory employees, strategies that don’t work out etc …
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. My show is doing very well, though, and I’m having a ball personally.”
Update 2:
Scoble just posted this to his Twitter, saying Gillmor told him Arrington was right “about everything.” Mike responded within minutes on Crunchnotes with this post:
The funny thing is that Robert and I were immediately laughing together at the TechCrunch party, just an hour or so after the big fight on Friday. He apologized. I apologized. Then we shot some video.