Just wondered.. What if this Mystery Sponsor is dedicated to collect resumes and break privacy laws - similarly to AllOfMp3.com and Russia story? Do you think they’re reliable? You’re the trustable party here, so it may need a small explanation.

I suspect they aren’t.

Mystery Sponsor promises “…all the gadgets you need…we provide peace of mind with your own chef, housekeeping, driver and security…”

Well to be honest I would not expect anything less. Too bad I am neither web developer nor designer. But this job ad makes me wanna be one. So cool.

Are there any kings in Asia?

The Mystery Sponsor is very interesting however I personally don’t think they’ll be seeing many resumes from some of the best developers in the market for two reasons.

1) Developers don’t like mysteries.
2) 50K Isn’t that big of an incentive.

nick - this is not a signing bonus - a signing bonus is paid out at the beginning. this is a “end of contract” bonus.

and let’s see some issues here..

– wont tell you who they are
– bonus upon 6 months and the contract probably says that they can fire you anytime - so you will never see that bonus
– says they provide security - wtf, nyc, san fran, london, no security needed - so where in the hell do they put you then?
– the wage is probably a wage for asia, not the us or europe
– i certainly hope the tc team knows about who is behind this and actually supports this group.

My money’s on it being a Dubai (or possibly Hong Kong) thing. Plenty of investment, a real urge to be the very best “media city” and attract overseas companies and investment, and plenty of skyscrapers up (with more coming).

Micheal, it would be nice, with the little amount of information made available, if you rate the company and believe it to be all completely legitimate. The “cloak and dagger” nature of it is likely, IMO, to put some potentially great applications off.

Compete has good potential - if they are able to further refine their technology - it will become widely adopted by online Marketers and Advertisers and SEOs

I think it’s intersting that you rag on PayPerPost and their ilk (which you should, IMO) but yet your include these “Sponsor Breaks” in your blog posts. Especially when you include marketing hyperbole like “the premier spot” and “beats out the competition”.

I’m no expert in journalism, but isn’t this blurring the line between editorial and advertising?

You’re not “thanking” your advertisers, you’re earning more revenue by including them in your blog posts.

I’ll spill some beans here

Try doing a 404 on “mystery” site (try any page that does not exists) and you’ll s a clue:

> Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat) Server at plesk7.trendax.net Port 80

google for that particular domain or company and you will have a good guess who’s behind the page.

(His nickname begins with K)

However the offer sounds interesting, I did send my application

Minimum investments of $50,000 in the Trendax fund are now being accepted from those eager to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This is odd, that is really close to what they offer as bonus.

Trendax

Oh by the way, they are located in Hong Kong, sounds nice!

I believe it to be “Everyones Internet” I did a google search on the IP

I believe it to be “Eveyones Internet” I did a google search on the IP

Jason
Chicago IL

EV1/theplanet is one of the biggest server providers of the net, they have no need to hire people this way - the mystery people have just ordered a server from them.

I have to say I find this mystery thing a little offensive. Let’s put it this way, how would a VC react to a company asking for investment the same way? I hope recruiters some day realize that hiring good developers is no different than raising money. Same questions need to be answered, same intolerance for secrecy. Why would a smart developer fall for this but not a VC?

Because this is the internet, and the startup in question want to keep low profile. I understand the need for secrecy, and i also understand your point of view that Developer are an investment into the company.
I believe that if they are a sponsoring techcrunch.com, michael arrington did its research and found out that they are a clean and nice company.

@ ScratchingMyHead

Agreed 100%. Everyone is so swept up in the mystery web 2.0 pitch that they are missing the fact that Michael Arrington (aka Mr. I hate Sponsored Posts) is doing a sponsored post here.

Mike, I’d love to hear your moral justification of how this is better than what pay-per-post.com or reviewme.com do.

Hey Michael thanks for posting the carbonite info about the free trial. We’ll run it on one of the servers here and see how easy it is to use. Do you want comments here or on the forum instead?

FYI for other readers, the signup form only works in IE so make sure if you’re using Firefox to open it in an IE tab, or if IE itself.

Adam

Question:

If your blog featured ads paying $10K each per month, would you NOT take a moment to bring attention to them? After all, they ARE paying YOU to feature THEIR goods, products, and services on YOUR site. To maintain these lucrative deals — and to continue providing a valuable resource (which costs MONEY!) for tech professionals, investors, hobbyists, enthusiasts, etc., it is IMPERATIVE that you continue bringing VALUE to your SPONSORS!

Most websites today are operated like TV networks — they ARE ad supported. Without some form of monetization, Google wouldn’t be what it is today, nor would we have the great tools we’ve come to rely on them for. Advertising is a fact of life, and if any of us were in Michael’s position, we’d be doing the same to thank our sponsors and to make sure their presence is known.

After a year of quietly building an impressive podcast of interviews without pay or any form of sponsorship, I’d damn sure be happy if I even had $10K/mo of sponsorships starting out — and yes, I’d also be damn sure to thank my sponsors, as they’d be putting food on my table, funding my social media passion and other pursuits, allowing me to purchase much needed hardware upgrades, attend great conferences, etc.

Well, it’s called a “Commercial Break”, and if you compare the “editorial content” in this post to other posts you can see there’s a clear enough difference not to cause confusion. All he’s saying is that they sponsor his site, and he likes them. No “review” of the businesses in comparison to specific competitors, just generic phrases such as “beats out the competition” and “premiere”.

Though, I didn’t realize that Compete was a sponsor. Is that why the Alexa blogger did a post on how well their numbers match Techcrunch’s actual stats?

On the other hand, judging from the post about the ticket scalping industry, Arrington’s not being a paragon of virtue => access to more interesting topics.

If you all hate ads so much, then don’t read any feeds that say “commercial break”. Or perhaps as Mike to start up a subscription model for you. You pay him $5 a month, and you get an ad-free version on TechCrunch.

@ Ronald Lewis
@ Shambhu
@ Lisa

“If you all hate ads so much, then don’t read any feeds that say “commercial break”.”

… I never said I hate ads, commercial breaks, or sponsored posts. Mike did. Many times. He’s very vigilant about it as well. Then he goes and has a sponsored post.

No one else thinks it’s hypocritical to go on crusades against people having sponsored posts but then do a post specifically for your sponsors?

Maybe Ron, Sham, and Lisa are right and I’m wrong. Maybe there is no hypocrisy here. Maybe I misunderstand the situation. But I’d really like to hear Mike’s point of view on this.

Ads? What ads? I don’t see any ad or Flash crap in my Firefox thanks to the brilliant add-ons LOL

Kula: I think most people are referring to the content of this post, which is something an add-on isn’t hiding from you. If you read the post, you’ll see the ads. You can’t escape them…the post IS ads.

And I’m with John - I don’t care if I’m shown sponsored ads when reading a blog (they’re on the feed, too) but Michael is being hypocritical here. Oh, except he’s not saying anything bad about ReviewMe, because they’re owned by his sponsor TLA.

As for the mystery thing - they claim that if your resume is good enough, they’ll tell you who they are. Who’s going to be bold enough to mock something up and send it in anonymously? “I’ll tell you who I am if you tell me who YOU are…”

John,

I’ve only started reading TC religiously only a few weeks, so I haven’t seen the posts you’ve mentioned. Certainly, hypocrisy isn’t a good thing, but I’d have to read these posts to understand his position on ads overall.

Hmm, you guys raise a good point here. I recently used ReviewMe.com and had a blog provide an honest review of my website. There was disclosure at the beginning of the post and I was very happy with the service.

Now, I’ve seen Mike mention before how much he hates services like ReviewMe.com. I, however, fail to see the difference between the post I paid for and the post that I’m commenting to.

Mike, please explain.

P.S. I just want to mention that I have NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with this post. I just want clarification from Mike as to the difference btw this post and the ones that webmasters can purchase on ReviewMe, Pay-Per-Post, etc. Perhaps I’m missing something and would appreciate an explanation from Mike.

You guys must be new. There’s been posts talking about sponsors on TechCrunch, as well as many other blogs such as Valleywag or other WIN/Gawker media blogs since the early days.

Also, the mystery company is Trendax. Look up Trendax on google and understand why it is you don’t want to send your resume because you’re greedy.

I sent my application just to find out what they will offer even though I do understand this guys reputation, that’s why I thought it’s a good idea to post it here so nobody takes any risks unwillingly.

And who cares if some company has your resume? All your resumes are probably available on your home pages anyway (or at least should be)

All I know is that the level of trust I had for this blog to objectively review new companies has slipped a couple of notches.

I don’t mind mentioning your sponsors in your content. It’s just advertising. What I do mind is the same writers who give us the “news” tell us great things about their sponsors.

You are taking advantage of our trust.

And to be so militant against PayPerPost, etc. and then do this? Ick.

No offense to Mike and the TC crew, but I simply Adblock the ads for easy reading while getting my daily dose of TC. Note - I’ve previously clicked on several of the featured ads (some mentioned in the above post) so it’s not that I’m necessarily against having them, but with FF + Adblock it takes all of 30 seconds to nuke em all.

Info on the Mystery sponsor:

http://www.crime-research.org/.....s1104.html

The “Live like a king” sounds like what the really popular download service says when they’re trying to tell you to move to China.

Please note that server name has been removed from 404 page - that basically confirms their identity.

My detective work has confirmed the identy of the mystery employer as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz

Some evidence is: This domain (owned by Kim_Schmitz) points to the same “employer 2.0″ website
http://www.ultimaterally.com/

Also the source code of that site especially this part

body
{
text-align:center;
padding:0; margin:0;
background-image:url(gui/bg.gif);
color: #B2B8B8;
font-family: tahoma;
font-size: 11px;
text-align: left;
}

is identical to the source code in
http://www.megaupload.com/ (which is also owned by Kim_Schmitz see http://www.bmw-drivers.de/foru.....ideos.html

I assume the “top 500″ website is http://www.megaupload.com (which alexa ranks as 22) but this is disputed since they require users of their website to install an alexa toolbar.

The asian country is probably Hong Kong where megaupload.com is located.

As already mentioned be careful in dealings with Kim Schmitz, he is a convicted criminal and fraudster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjoAOLHIxkQ

That video gives you a bit of an idea what that Kimble guy must be like.

I sent my application 3 days ago and still haven’t got a reply.

If this truly is the case with a previous scamster/criminal running this thing, why would you support this Michael? What’s to say this or the company it’s for
isn’t designed to be a scam?

Also interestingly they promise to provide a reply within 48hours yet my newly created folio hasn’t been viewed in 3 days.