“It’s unfortunate that there seem to be some vicious people out there who want nothing more than to tear others down. ”

He should know, he’s one of them. Ask Tim O’Reilly or Andrew Orlowski - who were both on the end of Hawk’s lunatic stalking campaigns, as Hawk smeared them on every blog he could find.

Zooomr has problems but it shouldn’t have picked a Chief Evangelist famous for his anger management problems.

http://digg.com/tech_news/Your.....le_Graphic

I wouldn’t waste money on something like Zooomr. Why not buy something with users and people give a damn about (except of course TechCrunch).

Are you ten? Is this web 5 year old? You purport to be an influencer, you run a blog in a space I am interested in, and you try and be controversial.

As a result you are going to have to deal with what results from your actions. One thing that has been made clear here is that you political / opinion work probably had an impact on zoomer being attacked (If there was an attack, SHOW US SOME PROOF).

The other thing that I think comes out of this is that despite talking to a lot of influential people about blogging I don’t get the feeling that you listened very well to what they said, as you blog is polarizing while many others feel sort of unifying (scoble)

I will continue to read your tripe, just as I read the drudgereport and listen to Limbaugh once and a while, need to know what others are thinking, even if I don’t agree.

Dave

What kind of investor would back or acquire nitwits that hype a launch and then can’t make the deadline? Overpromising, underdelivering. This is like a bad CS group project.

If anyone ponies up more than pocket change for this, I call dibs on this as seven-foot tall canary in coalmine.

What’s happened is Zooomr has demonstrated that though it may have ‘cool’ features, it has some serious underlying architecture issues, not to mention support problems. I would have thought a better ‘hire’ for the company would have been more technical support, particularly those with experience in supporting a large, multi-use application, than to hire an evangelist.

This has been a demonstration of the worst of web 2.0. That’s not being vicious; that’s pointing out the reality.

You went beyond a 24 hour downtime. For a web applcation, that’s the kiss of death. You _never_ go beyond the 24 hour window.

Oh and it doesn’t matter who has lunch with who but in fact I’ve never had lunch with Arrington although I respect him greatly as blogger. I do consider Om a friend and again there’s nothing wrong with this. I’m not quite sure I get the point here.

As for blogging about a field “digital photography” and then taking a job in that space I think it’s ludicrous that you’d object to this. I am deeply passionate about digital photography. I have been for years. And I’ve been very very active in the social networking side of the medium. Zooomr has finally given me an opportunity to quit being the guy who yells at the coach from the stands and to actually get down on the floor and help build and design something that has deep personal meaning and signficance for me. I don’t see the problem there. Many bloggers work for companies and many bloggers blog about the companies that they work for. I’m not going to stop blogging about the photo sharing space just because I’m now part of building it. If you find this so objectionable Dave, feel free to skip my blog. Nobody is forcing you to read it.

Thomas Hawk is the only online blogging and tech identity that I use and have used for a number of years.

It’s unfortunate that there seem to be some vicious people out there who want nothing more than to tear others down. We are a small company right now and as such it’s more of a challenge to overcome these sorts of things. But we are committed and will get over this when we can and you will all be able to play with Zooomr. Zooomr already has and will have some super innovative features in the photo sharing space. But more than this we are deeply and passionately committed to continuing to roll out interesting features in the months ahead and to work super hard at building a community that others will want to be a part of.

Scrapping our launch, the attack, the mean spiritedness of some comments are unfortunate. But we will do the best that we can to work around them. Thanks to those who offered support and condolences. I’m sure it’s not the first time that a small company hit a hurdle.

More than technology I am at heart a photographer. What is exciting to me is that we will have an opportunity to develop truly innovative things for photographers and create new and interesting ways to share photos and allow people connect with each other.

Kris and Michael finally got some sleep last night after about four days of straight all nighters. Give us a bit more time and we hope to have this sorted out. And thanks to all those offering supportive words, it means a lot.

The hype far exceded their skill and they paid.

They got 11 diggs, but the founders of digg showed up at their party?

What a bunch of lame SF people hanging ou together.

I liked Albert Lai’s comment: there is room for competition, and hopefully no one will (or can) patent many of the bits the different sites share.

But the person who ‘outed’ Thomas Hawk, I’ve long thought not giving his full identity impacts negatively on him being an evangelist (!?). But it was up to him to identify himself.

As for who goes to lunch with whom, you know, there is life outside of SillyValley.

I still see the countdown stuck on 11 minutes 9 sec. Tried in both IE and FF. Ugh!