Ev ‘giving’ us new followers on Twitter? Never asked, never suggested, never demanded. Twitter management’s choice. Sorry, conspiracy theorists.

Mike was not spat on at Davos, it was the DLD conference.

It took (and I dare anyone to say it’s not true) 40 to 50 seconds for the ‘homophobic’ image to be removed from my post. ‘Some time’ is just skewing the facts. I apologized in comments, in the blog and personally to every single commentor and blogger who pointed me to the fact that the guy I took the image from contained the word ‘fags’, if I had contact details.

Sarah Lacy’s posts have been very well received, you shouldn’t only look at the negative comments you want to see. There’s a silent majority that very much enjoys her writings, and a not so silent audience that says so in comments and e-mails to our staff. You’re just reading the feedback you want to read.

‘At the time of this writing’ Erick had already updated the Last.fm post with more comments from him about the whole situation. I’ll leave the rest of this story up to him, he’s biting into it like I expected him to.

All the points I’m making show that you are extremely biased about reporting on anything TechCrunch does (for whatever reason), and I’m always surprised to see you take the higher moral ground when it comes to anything related to social media when you blocked me from following you on Twitter even though you know very well we’ve never had any differences.

Do with this information whatever you want.

– I never said that Twitter gave TC more followers because anyone from TC asked, etc. I am saying TC was given more and that is helping TC bigtime.

– Aah – thanks for the correction, will change to DLD instead of davos – there was so much bickering it seemed like I forgot that there were two conferences there.

– I know you took down the image and offered a "we" apology. It would have been better to just say "I screwed up" – I am pretty sure Heather had nothing to do with it for example.

– I can tell you that Sarah’s posts haven’t been well received. I’ve received enough unsolicited emails and instant messages telling me so. I read all the feedback and saw the positive as well.

– Yea, it will be interesting to see what happens next from the last.fm posts. It’s got to be a hot topic internally at TC about how to proceed. As I noted I think they went a bit too far with their reply (especially the topic).

– I removed the block – I can’t remember exactly why I blocked you but I think it had to do with some story and linking – but I forget which.

Thanks for providing your thoughts on my post.

- ” the game is setup to keep the top on top” is not stating facts, it’s opinion. At least back it up with *something* if you’re going to make a big deal out of it.

- we all got e-mails separately, and we all apologized. It’s called a team. I can’t tell you how much positive response I got from the LBGTQ community for apologizing sincerely and personally. And mind you, that I did not even create a bigot image nor spread any bigotry.

- TC has a massive audience, as has Sarah. There are haters, there are lovers. It’s just the way it goes. Her posts have not been particularly well or poorly received, they’ve just been received. I do not let your IM contact list and inbox judge Lacy’s writings, I’m just saying I see the positive (and yes, the negative) incoming at TC. It comes with the territory, and I hope some day you will experience that and learn from it.

- Last.fm is definitely not a particularly hot topic internally. Erick can handle himself perfectly. We have people slamming us every day, this is not new. He’s watching all the feedback and at the same time looking into the story deeper, they way it should be.

- I’m trying hard not to get pissed off, but don’t ever accuse me of not linking to a source for a story again, ever. And you don’t have to unblock me, I’m just letting you know you’re not better than any of the bloggers you read, so don’t take the higher moral ground.

She comes across as a valley groupie not a reporter.

Its a shame but thats the facts perhaps she should cover tech for the likes of rollingstone as thats more her level.

As I write this, these are the latest TechCrunch posts:

Aqua Moto: It’s Like Wave Race For Your iPhone
Social Web Q&A with Google’s Kevin Marks
GumGum Adds B5Media, DailyFill To Its Image-Licensing Network
Microsoft Research: A Look At The Intriguing Social Desktop Prototype
Bebo Zeroes In On Lifestreaming For The Masses; Gets Massive Bump From AIM Profiles
After MySpace And Facebook, Oodle To Power Brand New AOL Classifieds
Kyte Launches Turn-Key iPhone App Platform
Skimlinks Gets $1m To Give Publishers Control Of Affilate Ads
Put This On Your T-Shirt: Spreadshirt Scores €10 Million
More Consolidation In Europe: GoAdv To Acquire LeGuide.com For €50 Million
Letter to Obama: What the Car Industry Needs Is A Steve Jobs
Thummit Scopes Out Twitter To Rate The Oscars In Real Time
Friedman Misses the Point and Economic Reality of Silicon Valley
Hot News: The AP Is Living In The Last Century
How To Make Twitter Sound Like Music To Your Ears
Facebook Photos Pulls Away From The Pack
Another Way To Look At Terms Of Service Agreements: Wordle Visualizations
Andreessen in realtime
Oops: Microsoft Asks Some Laid Off Workers To Send Back Part Of Their Severance

How many of these posts sound really important, let alone remotely interesting?

I wrote about why I’m not reading many tech blogs anymore and I think the headlines above demonstrate very well just how irrelevant TechCrunch has become.

Ironically, that’s exactly what Time observed when it named TechCrunch one of the most overrated blogs of 2009.

The funny thing is that for a blog that always talks about “innovation” and loves to lash out at stodgy old companies, TechCrunch sure seems to act like one. Clearly, nobody at TechCrunch HQ wants to acknowledge that it has a content problem and that it needs to adapt if it’s going to maintain relevance.

Of course, it’s hard to adapt when the trend you rode to the top (in this case Web 2.0) has been exposed as a fraud.

As for the think of bigger stuff – I agree totally and that’s why I don’t post about the insider crap that often.

Sorry TC but the writing’s on the wall. Your days as the top tech/startup blog are numbered. And not just because of the topics mentioned here, but also because you stopped covering REAL startups.

Facebook is not a startup. Neither is Twitter. These are both large, established companies with tens or hundreds of millions of users, and they’re 5 and 3 years old respectively. Just because they don’t have a real business model yet, does not mean they’re a startup. A story here and there would be ok, but you write about both of them obsessively every single day. We can only take so much of that before we decide your site has passed its prime.

Yes, possibly Sarah has fans out the wazoo privately, but public comments and reactions are more of the eye rolling and sighing than of the out and out praise for her. Not saying she doesn’t have fans, we all have fans, but again –

You presented how TechCrunch looks to the public right now. You aren’t privy to what Robin is privy too, and neither are we.

Great overall observation post – without the name calling, cursing and back stabbing (front stabbing!) that you see all the time. That is why I enjoy reading quality over quantity. Now some do enjoy post after post after post, and that’s why there are tumblr blogs like mine. :)

Rex

You won’t hear may say this often, but I’m going to stick up for Erick on the RIAA post. Sometimes you get leads from sources and you run them. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t. Risk is inherent when reporting leaks/ sources, and speed is vital in publishing them (well, at TC anyway) to get the jump.

However, given that Gabe accused me of making stories up when I had a lead back in August that didn’t work out, and used that as an excuse to dump The Inquisitr from Techmeme, I call on Gabe to do the same with TechCrunch, that after all would only be fair and equitable, and certainly my post had some basis in truth (and had a legit source) where as Erick’s post would seem far fetched to begin with.

You’re 100% right on the set up to keep the top at the top, although Twitter isn’t the only site guilty, FriendFeed is still making similar recommendations.

Your post inspired me to do this toon: http://bit.ly/oVNzf

Guhmshoo