Nick Denton (pictured left) likes to use his blog Valleywag to take shots at competitors - his most recent attack was on Jason Calacanis (on right), who founded and then cashed out of the blog network Weblogs, Inc. Denton has always played second fiddle to Jason, never quite achieving the same level of success. Many say this is because he can’t handle it when his writers get more attention than he does, and he finds subtle ways of undermining them. His recent firing and public trashing of writer Nick Douglas certainly lends credibility to this rumor.
Yesterday Denton used fuzzy math and incorrect statements of fact to suggest that Jason’s most recent project, a relaunch of Netscape, is falling apart. It turns out Denton didn’t factor in the fact that Netscape moved millions of email accounts over to a new domain name, which resulted in the drop in traffic. Denton was wrong, but didn’t correct the post even after Jason left comment corrections. We have certainly taken our own shots at the new Netscape here at TechCrunch, but Denton’s post just reeks of a poorly researched hit job.
Jason fires back today by lobbing a subtle but potentially devastating bomb into Denton’s back yard. He writes a post about one of Denton’s top bloggers, Gina Trapani at Lifehacker. Disguised as a tribute to the blog, Jason notes that revenue must be $400k - $1 million/year and says Gina is the “one blogger I wished we had landed at Weblogs, Inc.” He also says “She’s grown LifeHacker from nothing to 7M pages last month–that’s big time.” He continues:
The one blogger I wished we had landed at Weblogs, Inc. was Gina Trapani from LifeHacker. I tried every two months for a year I think… no offer was good enough. Very, very frustrating.
This post should cost Denton - Gina is clearly going to be getting a flurry of attention and competing offers. At the very least it gives her significant salary negotiating leverage. Whatever the outcome, Jason has made one thing clear - take a shot at him and he’ll try to make it as financially painful for you as possible.
I happen to read Techcrunch and Valleywag on a daily basis. I’ve seen Valleywag take shots at Techcrunch and I’m glad to see Michael make this post. Valleywag supposedly changed directions from Silicon Valley gossip to more of the business focus behind Silicon Valley companies but I haven’t seen much change. Valleywag is still into the gossip but now they’re just throwing in numbers in random blog postings.
Obviously Michael can write what he wants. It’s his blog and it’s up to us whether or not we want to read it.
As with any blog, people leaving comments gives the author direction on what the audience wants to hear. So, either way I believe people should leave comments that don’t fall into the kiss-{insert author here}-ass category if they want to.
As for me, I agree w/ the the critics on this one. Reading the clearly personal-bias from our “source of all things Web 2.0″ undermines author credibility IMHO. Claims that the companies were ‘previously covered’, while true is a mere justification.
I guess in the end who really cares that much?
Juvenile all the way around. This is a very small tempest in a very small teapot. Yes, yes, controversy proves that the article did what it was supposed to (generate interest), but it would be a shame if Techcrunch devolved down to the level of c. 1998 star-tracking.
Lots of media has op-ed articles, I see this as no different, though I do think there was something to this story, maybe just not put in a way where everybody can get it.
Dave, a Techcrunch commenter, has it right - the cat fighting between Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton is High School 2.0 and the related Techcrunch post by Michael Arrington reads like an article out of the student-run school paper. On the other hand we’re all reading it so doesn’t that just make us a bunch of High School students? I appreciate Mike’s coverage of the spat and enjoy reading about the more colorful side of the business sometimes. The comments associated with Mike’s post are even more colorful ; ) - locker talk.
Messing around with Jason, IMO, isn’t smart. He’s well connected, visible, smart, and rich. Andrew Baron crossed him (listen to this TWit podcast) once and I think that might have marked the beginning of RocketBoom’s trouble. RocketBoom.com Flame-out.
Related:
Nick’s post “Netscape: The Calacanis Effect” gets it started
Jason starts firing back with “My favorite blogger/blog of the moment…“
“when blogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have blogs…”
keep it coming mike
Posts like this continue to marginalize TechCrunch and waste readers’ time. I hope you guys clean up soon. Not only is this juvenile, its uninteresting.
Jason is a sharp guy. He’s gotta lotta patience too but this was too much. Nice use of innuendo Jason. - bob
Mike: no disclosure that, as you talk so openly about in that Gillmor Gang podcast earlier this month, you’ve made “repeated” offers to hire Gina away from Lifehacker yourself? Sneaky!
pathetic
I agree…more web 2.0 analysis, less gossip. I have a valleywag feed for a reason.
You got to be kidding me, TECHCRUNCH Is about covering startups and internet companies and the web 2.0 world
Why the F*** do we give a S*** about this BS high school drama.. Let them deal with there own situations and stick to what you do best…
Come On M!
C-
Now this is back to a real blog again. So what’s it gonna be? Write reviews as a business and stick to your model, or blogeriffic content like this?
I read Jason’s post, along with his sordid review of old newspaper clippings (”I coulda been a contender!”) as coming from someone who just lost their little media empire and is jealous of his old rival - Nick Denton - who is still in business.
Sure, Jason sold Weblog’s Inc. a year ago, but he’s been peripherally connected to it while at AOL. Now that he’s no longer at AOL, he’s lost all of his blogs and his little media empire.
Jason is JEALOUS of Nick Denton. He’s the kind of person for whom money isn’t everything - it’s being in the game that counts. Nick Denton is still in the game, which is saying a lot.
Jason’s going to have to start from scratch all over again. Not that he hasn’t successfully done this before.
All this bluster makes me wonder:
Will the Web 2.0 Conference/Summit/Holy Gathering of Masonic Net Wizards eventually have a “pissing contest” booth?
juvenile claptrap. if i wanted to read nerd gossip i know where to go (and frankly, i care as little for it as i care about paris hilton). that’s most assuredly not what i come here for. get over yourself, or at least keep your internecine bickering to a personal blog if you want to retain a reputation for professionalism.
as to “we’re all reading it” — don’t be ridiculous. of course we’re all reading it — how is one to know an article in an otherwise pretty reliably decent blog is complete crap unless one reads it first?
Eyeballing comscore numbers, it looks like in the period post the Netscape redesign NS PVs tracked from 731m in June to 405 in October.
In the same period AIM.com PVs tracked from 89m to 71m.
You would expect this to go up by several hundred million PVs instead if it was the move of the email accounts that caused the drop in PVs.
Its possible that Comscore isn’t tracking the URL’s for the email accounts shifted from Netscape to AIM domains.
I notice t hat most of the negative commenters here are using made-up names and aren’t real people. I suspect they are all written by the same person, given the writing style.
Personally, if I were Mike, I’d say hell to the lot of you and do what I want on my own blog.
Geesh, so many “blog experts” who aren’t even willing to sign their own names…
Hey, I invented the whole web log thing back when I had an accident in my Spidey suit after seeing the previews for the new SpiderMan 3 and it came out solid.
So if anything, all you pissing and moaning ninnies owe me a debt of gratitude.
Wow, this is some serious fucked up shit.
A polemical lambast using Bushite rhetoric to attack publicly what is inside industry pettiness? Blogs are on their way down…