37Signals Drives Another Company To The DeadPool

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1. Jason
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

   I can’t wait to see the responses to this one- especially is 37 Signals responds. I think you need to know your market to decide whether or not to charge. I think 37 Signals (and also our market) require such, but charging for feed readers was probably a bad idea.

2. blimmr
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

   100,000 lemmings cant be wrong. Or not.

3. RBA
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

   But was Alex King influenced by the 37 Signals pitch or he in fact believed he could build a business with that product and business model? There are many people starting web companies that charge for their services and don’t even know what 37 Signals is.

4. Michael Arrington
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

   RBA - you are 100% right, thus the first sentence of the post. However, I think that a lot of people do look to 37signals for advice on how to run their business, and I believe that advice is often catastrophically wrong.

5. Henry
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

   I think 37 Signals is right though. They do charge, but their products are worth it… why introduce YET ANOTHER RSS feed tracker/aggregator, no matter how must *more* useful it is, when others do the same or similar job for no cost.

   The difference between this writers interpretation of 37 Signals view is that apparently users aren’t prepared to pay for something that isn’t worth the difference, and apparently they are prepared to pay for something that is worth it. It’s the Apple problem… why pay what appears to be more, for something that doesn’t feel like it. They can get a Dell for $500, why pay $1000 when they can’t appreciate the difference.

   Commoditization has led us to a world of mediocrity - mediocre computers, applications and lives - we don’t see that something that is great, is worth something, and as such is worth paying for. We’ll expect rent free apartments next, and cost free living. If only utopia would come?!

6. Mark
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

   I think another big part of the 37s mantra is to build something of value. I never tried Feedlounge, but it does not sound at all remarkable and thus doomed to fail, free or not.

7. Josh Williams
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

   Seems to me that the problem was not that they charged for their service… perhaps they had an average service in a crowded space. Charging for the service simply becomes a hinderance to adoption — but who’s to say they would’ve survived even if the service was free?

   When did the 37s ever say “You’re dumb to create a free service”? A couple of their services are free…

   Sensationalism… *yawn*

8. Luca
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

   When reading that post I got a strong feeling that somebody doesn’t like 37Signals….

9. Cameron Barrett
   

   August 13th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

   37Signals can charge fees for their products because they offer a unique set of tools and services that are mostly unmatched by their competitors — especially their competitors that offer similar services for free.

   With Feedlounge, I think the problem was that they were going up against an already-entrenched and over-saturated market where the competition was fierce. Even Google got into the game with their Google Reader, which is free.

   Attacking 37Signals for the failure of a completely-unrelated company seems a bit ridiculous, Mike. Maybe I’ll start blaming you for the failure of every blog out there that tried to make money by blogging but didn’t hit that perfect mix of content, information and opinion. After all, it’s not their fault — it’s TechCrunch’s fault that they failed. Silly.

10. Allen Stern
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    Here are my thoughts from last week on the free vs. paid dealy:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....o-be-right

    I totally disagree with this statement:
    Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with.

    The right choice is to do what you believe is right. Sometimes we must fail to learn. If we don’t try (in this case enter the market), we will always look back at what might have been. The key is to jump into the deep end and learn to swim and not wade in the shallow part.

    Once a product moves into the commodity stage, the key to being able to charge is to innovate and move outside the commodity.

    As for free or paid, my belief is that you should look at both options and then decide. Too many companies I speak with believe it has to be free and never think about the paid option. Paid will naturally mean less accounts and activity but might be the better choice in the end. The issue is that once you go free, you can’t really change easily.

11. Austin
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    Can we stop spreading the false myth of lemmings being stupid creatures who cannot figure out how not to walk off a cliff?

    http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.htm

12. Jimmy Huen
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    It is a combination of timing and business model that banished it to the deadpool. It might have a chance if it was one of the first to enter the RSS market and charged a small fee for it and later on make a 180 and becomes free.

    But by the time it launched, the “fee” model that would’ve worked when the idea was conceptualized would not have worked.

13. Colin Dowling
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    I’m not entirely sure how 37s factors in to the fact that a mediocre product is going out of business. That said, I too am a HUGE advocate that free software is either (a) a bad idea or (b) money left on the table. Even worse is that nowhere in your post do you note that all of 37s products have a free version, which is a shame.

    There are a lot of ways to generate revenue on the internet. Regardless of a person’s feelings on those models, the fact remains that mediocre offerings at poor price points will fail every time. 37Signals didn’t invent that truth; it’s been around forever.

14. TDavid
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    The RSS feed reader market is saturated like the video market. Expect to see many entries into the deadpool from this crowd. Hurry up and register tcdeadpool.com or some catchy derivative Mike.

15. Dan Grossman
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    I don’t get it. Why would any business be basing its decisions on what 37 Signals does? I can’t even find someone in IT offline that’s *heard* of 37 Signals.

16. Justin
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Or the other possibility is that most web2.0 ventures should not charge for their services because their services are not worth more than micro-payments (which are apparently still impossibly difficult to collect online).

    No subscription $$s for you! So its ad-supported or bust..

    And if you’re going to fail by collecting $2 per 1000 pages from adsense because to pay the bills that way means you need to serve more page views than god, then try not launching in the first place, your idea isn’t good enough.

17. mariner
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

    Looks like someone at 37signals did not agree with Michael at some point and was put on his shit list. Michael, why are you calling out 37Signals for feedlounge failing?

18. Tim
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:22 pm

    The add-supported model is often suicide as well. Works great when the economy is booming, but ask 75% of the internet companies back in 2000 what model they were on, and you will see a pretty high correlation between those who were on the ad-model and those that shut down when the market crashed.

    A lot of people are making a great point, that the true deciding factor here was whether they really offered value to their customers. Create value and you can charge, because it is worth it. Offer a commodity, and most likely it is a losing proposition anyway.

19. Gabe
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    Someone left a comment defending actual lemmings. I love TechCrunch comments!

20. Garth
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    They responded to a rediculous statement made by one of your employee’s and you fire back that they are “attacking”.

    If the marginal production cost of software is zero, then why did TechCrunch buy inviteshare, built in a few days of coding, for $25,000?

21. Michael Arrington
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    Garth - do you know what “marginal production cost” means?

22. Jamie Tibbetts
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    It’s good to know that I can now build a mediocre website in a saturated market filled with free alternatives and then blame 37signals for my failure.

23. Killian
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    I think 37signals encourages folks to offer a free version to get folks hooked and then charge for a more robust product. I don’t think its 37s fault that these guys went under.

24. Markus
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    I do just fine in my market by not charging users….

    If you are in a super competitive industry, than not charging for a product is probably the only way to grow and gain marketshare. None of the markets mentioned here are all that competitive, as there isn’t all that much money to be made. ie Not a billion dollar market.

25. cbmeeks
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Damn, sounds like someone has a grudge against 37 Signals. I’ve read their book and seen their stuff and I can say it is great they are making money. I also admit that it’s foolish to charge money for something that you can get for free. However, just ask SmugMug about free stuff.

    It’s a game and it’s getting harder and harder to find something worth paying for.

    cbmeeks
    http://www.signaldev.com

26. N.Cauldwell
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    I must admit to feeling a little bit brain-washed after reading Getting Real. Let’s be honest, when it comes to business models, you’ve just gotta go straight to MC Hammer.

27. Josh Owens
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    Mike,

    Way to take something way out of context and use some sensational headlines to try and grab readers… 37signals preaches to charge for a product, and I think they have the right idea. The problem with feedlounge is that they didn’t offer a free version for me to try. Look at every one of the 37signals products and you will see they have a small free version to try their product.

    You seem like a smart guy, so why play dumb in your post?

28. Jason McMinn
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    Doesn’t 37 Signals promote more of a “freemium” model for their applications? Freemium models have solutions for everyone - personal users and business users. The feature set drives users (a small percentage of them) to pay the application.

    Any dumbass that is willing to take any one persons advice (i.e. Jason Fried’s) as the sole way to shape a business model doesn’t deserve to be in business anyway.

    Michael has interesting point about commoditization of services. Web e-mail, calendar, RSS has been commoditized and 99.9% of consumers are not willing to pay. The bar has been raised by Oddpost and Gmail so all the crap e-mail services have been deadpooled.

    IMO - if you are building a subscription based consumer service, the competition is fierce. I think there are a ton of opportunity in the vertical business markets for respectable web apps. It is not sexy, but there is money to be made.

    It seems copy cat startups are a dime a dozen just like in 1999 except they are all waiting to get noticed by Google. I see danger Will Robinson.

29. Sean
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

    I have no affiliation with 37s, in fact I could care less about them… BUT, I must defend them here, this article is just a huge conflict of interest.

    History: Nick of TC fame recently wrote an article about Mundu (an iPhone app) and why it’s dumb they’re charging:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....-charging/

    37s wrote a response to Nick’s article, calling it complete crap:

    http://www.37signals.com/svn/p.....eeing-free

    (Choice quote: “They forget that not everyone has Google’s search subsidies, Yahoo’s traffic, or Apple’s hardware revenues making up for their “free” bundled software.”)

    And now we have an article on TC saying 37s sucks, more or less.

    Hmmm… interesting.

    PS: I’m making a living in a very crowded market (web analytics) that includes Google as an obviously VERY major competitor. How am I making money? Mainly off charging users for the product.

    Does this make me crazy?

30. Garth
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

    Michael - are you as obnoxious as you seem?

31. Nick Gonzalez
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    Seth, how is stating an opinion a conflict of interest?

32. Zach Cox
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    It’s simple: you price your product based on the value your market places on it. If your product is as valuable to your market as the $100k enterprise system they currently own, you price your product at $100k. If your market already has comparable products available to it for free, then your market is not going to pay you anything for your product, not even $1. Note also that it’s your market that determines the meaning of “valuable” and “comparable”, not you!

33. Saagar
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 6:24 pm

    Mike on fire today bashing Alexa and 37 signals left right and center

34. Sean
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    What I mean is that TC has a *HUGE* influence, and I feel like this post is abusing that power to get back at someone, rather than just a typical article with some random observation.

    This article basically boils down to, someone else didn’t like an article on TC, so they wrote a response to it. And in response to that, TC writes an article saying more or less that 37s sucks and because people listen to 37s’s opinion on software pricing, they are making other companies fail.

    If this article had been written before the “Mundu” article on TC, it would be an entirely different story. But this is all about retaliation, and that’s crap.

35. Gil Friend
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    Why blame 37signals? THese guys didn’t have to follow their advice. YMMV!

    (PS: Didn’t you say way up there that the software “wasn’t great”? RIP.

36. Ernest Nova
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    Apparently, you should only start companies with strategies that are guaranteed to succeed - and Starbucks should not have entered the premium coffee market since , well, a cup of coffee was fairly commoditized when they did.

37. Trevor Elliott
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    Aside from 37’s freemium model being omitted in the post, I for one like these more ballsy opinion pieces. The previous “Alexa is embarrasing” post included.

    Bravo

38. aaron
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    You can’t fault Alex / Scott for trying to build a business around a useful service. It didn’t work, but it’s a stretch to label them lemmings considering they were in the minority at the time by trying to build a paid subscriber model. It’s also worth noting that Alex jumped out of feedlounge ops quite a while back.

39. Shoshanna Morton
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

    ok boys and girls - what have we learned here? mess with an intern on tc and get your arse handed to you by tc boss using hitman title tactics. This story has nothing to do with 37sig but it was just sitting there waiting for the right time to pownce.

    #34 Sean - you are correct.

40. Dominin
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    I am certainly not a techie, but I am a businessman. I know profit is a dirty word to a lot of people these days. Shame!. I also understand Mike is an attorney, and I know the negative mentality that’s inherent in the legal profession. Most attorneys are deal killers instead of deal makers. I have been reading TC for about 5 months now and I see a lot of negativity towards Arrington. I also see the attitude Mike has towards many businesses that may cut their teeth outside of his sphere of Venture Capital circles. He is in the business he is to make a profit and to make a positive impact on those businesses his circle of friends are involved with. either directly or indirectly. It’s called Greed , and Greed IS Good, even in tabloid journalism. To make such an attack on 37 Signals out of left field is preposterous. A recent article on Cnnmoney.com of fthe top 50 internet influences state that TC brings in about $200K a month. Not chump change but probably no where close to what 37 Signals pockets. To post an Editorial View as news and blame other businesses demise on 37 Signals is Tabloid. To attack a company out of jealousy is small minded. I enjoy reading TC, but am getting a little tired of the FB evangelism and the constant cutdown of anything not touched by MA. The article made reference to how damaging it can be to any business to not be blessed by Mike. Just remember, what goes around, comes round. This blog has deteriorated badly.

41. Phil
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:10 pm

    @Dominin

    You are so right, this blog is starting to go sour, just like a startup that has reached its tipping point - It’s time to sell Mike!

42. Martin Neumann
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    Not sure about putting it all on 37s, in fact, I don’t think 37s should even be mentioned in this post, unless they advised FeedLounge or something like that …

    The rest of the post is good reading especially…

    * Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with. *

    That, Mike, is 100% correct.

43. heri
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    i am sure that if the market crashes, 37Signals will be the last to close their doors. They have one of the most solid businness model out there.

    but here is the catch, it’s quite a challenge (understatement) to be another 37Signals. paying for a web RSS reader when there is google reader is crazy.

44. Keith Mancuso
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:56 pm

    What a stupid argument that is. This company probably would have failed even faster if they never charged for their services, how would “giving it away for free” have saved feedlounge?

    why is this an argument against charging for software?

45. Jean
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    Businesses are happy to pay for software when they see value. Thousands of small shops make a very decent living of selling them software. And guess what? They did not wait for web2.0 Photoshop effects to do so.

    TC is missing many boats lately…

46. Nevin
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

    Nah, I think Arrington is right on this one. He didn’t really diss 37 Signals, just pointed out it’s model isn’t for everyone, or every service.

    The models *are* different. Feedburner was selling a commodity — something that is so cheap to produce that is sells for little or in this case, nothing — whereas 37 Signals sells productivity software that is used higher up the value chain by specialists who are willing to pay for it.

    A good example is Zoho (yes, the company that advertises all over techmeme) — which operates by *both* models. The mass-market office is good quality, and it’s free.

    Two things seem to be going on here:

    1. Content that was once free, or has the expectation of being free, is tainted. Note The New York TimesSelect, and even the music industry, where purchased music represents 1% of the music on all ipods.

    2. Freemium (free and premium content) works with niche audiences. See Techdirt.

    …

    You’s guys are getting a little trigger happy…

47. BlogReader
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    [ Nevin : Nah, I think Arrington is right on this one. He didn’t really diss 37 Signals, just pointed out it’s model isn’t for everyone, or every service. ]

    I’m not sure how you read “37Signals Drives Another Company To The DeadPool” as anything but a diss.

    [ A good example is Zoho— which operates by *both* models. ]

    You mean like 37Signals does?

48. john
    

    August 13th, 2007 at 10:43 pm

    This is a really stupid way to make a point. A classic headline in the (headless body in topless bar) genre.

    You have a point about where charging and where free is applicable. Just as 37s does. However, to attacking 37s like this makes no sense. If you have a beef with them, you can put it in Crunchnotes where the rest of your fights are settled.

49. Andy
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:49 am

    Google is beginning to charge for “free” products through extra storage or small business/enterprise versions. Same route as 37signals. It’s web based, you start on a free package and try before you buy.

    I too have a beef with 37signals. But more on the issue that they are too damning of software they claim to be bloated, when in fact they are sometimes bloated to offer the customisation that enterprise needs. Their “Getting Real” principle is what they quote most, not their pricing model.

50. Tim
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:31 am

    Michael, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. I’ve felt this for a long time, but now I undeniably believe it. It’s people like *you* and your advice who have driven one too many companies to the DeadPool. It’s people like you who have garnered a following and who have taken advantage of that position to dole out poor advice based on speculation and false positives that has created the culture of fear and paranoia that has driven much of internet development since the mid 90s.

    Feedlounge didn’t survive because their product was ill-conceived, not because they charged for it. They didn’t understand their audience or their target market well enough, hence the product tanked. And even if they did do everything right, there’s no guarantee they would have survived. Them’s the breaks. That’s life, and that’s business.

    What any of this has to do with 37signals is anybody’s guess.

51. Riddle
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:46 am

    I’m sticking with 37s here. Techcrunch would have had less stories and startups to cover if 37signals hadn’t existed. So I suggest to praise their work and business model and thanks for great tips they put in their books an on their blog.

52. Erik
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 5:21 am

    Maybe the recent change of tone on TC is because the number of readers are dropping. But bashing around and acting arrogant is not gonna help you get your readers back, Mike. Please go back to where you came from: a smart fun blog about startups. Because that’s what made you big.

53. Nirav Sheth
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 5:34 am

    I have officially unsubscribed my RSS reader from this blog. I would occasionally visit to acquire news articles, but I don’t need the information that bad.

    This is absolutely a diss to 37Signals and more than this, its complete garbage. 37S has kept it real from the start and only people like Techcrunch would misinterpret this. I agree with Erik above: go back to being a startup blog.

54. Jon
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 5:35 am

    No need to mention 37 signals here - poor show - they provide an excellent service model as many people have already mentioned. They provide things that have a useful niche - nothing like feedlounge. Poles apart in fact.

    This is a classic post straight from blogging tips and problogger - “you may alienate some of your audience and also cause controversy to gain comments and readership + links”. You have managed this very well!

55. Nate
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 6:12 am

    I know unfortunately I’ve been a reader of this blog for what like 2 years. But this post makes absolutely no sense. This blog used to be about reporting what’s out there, not using it for attacks. Removed from RSS reader….

56. Chris Peters
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 6:42 am

    Blame 37signals or not, evolution took feedlounge down. If you’re going to enter a market based on a vague technology that relatively few people understand (RSS feeds), then you’re going to have to be remarkable.

    The fact that no one noticed feedlounge going down means that it wasn’t worth talking about in the first place. In fact, you had to bring 37signals into the picture to even make this entry into the Deadpool worth talking about!

57. Master William
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 6:49 am

    Mike - Do you not sell postings on your CrunchBoard? $200 a time I believe. And there are dozens of free classifieds jobs services out there.

58. Brendo
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    37signals can only control what they do, I have no idea how they could have caused anyone else to ‘walk off the edge of a cliff’. This is a ridiculous post on what is usually a much more interesting blog.

59. Nathan Ostgard
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    As a person that was (at one time) a happily paying FeedLounge customer, I would have to say that the reasons for their failure have NOTHING to do with charging for their product. The fact was, they had terrible support and inconsistent product quality.

    Every single month my account would be disabled for non-payment, despite a successful PayPal payment. I would have to email support manually and wait a day or two for them to re-enable access for me.

    Sometimes the feeds would just stop updating for no reason. Would have to email support again and wait for days or weeks for it to start working.

    Half the time I couldn’t manage my feeds properly (renaming, updating, etc. wouldn’t be saved).

    I eventually canceled my FeedLounge subscription because of stuff like this happening day in and day out. I canceled long before they shut down. I can’t help but wonder how many others did, too.

    And, despite all that, I still haven’t found a reader I like as much as I liked it… Google Reader comes close, though.

60. Arun Vijayan
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am

    I really don’t think Alex King is a such a fool to make the service paid just because 37signals are promoting that biz model.

    Did he say so?

61. mariner
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:28 am

    Come on Michael, step up and respond to the communities questions about your intentions and facts supporting this post!

62. Joe
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:31 am

    I think this post, and esp. the comments that go with it, are sublime evidence that the author and readers of this blog are clearly all idiots.

    Isn’t it obvious Mr Arrington went through this little ruse just to drive traffic to his site?

    Is TC the new criterion of truth?

    Why are we even posting here?

    It reminds me of the outhouse eulogy:
    “A person’s mind must be pretty small, to write his thoughts on the shithouse wall.”

63. Steve
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:58 am

    Who here is going to tell Marc Benioff (Salesforce) and Zach Nelson (NetSuite) … et all the bad news?

    Understand Arrington lives in a walled garden (think Hollywood).

64. David McT
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 10:57 am

    It seems like closure was more to do with family issues, please do your research TC before flying off @ 37S…

    http://feedlounge.com/blog/200.....y-goodbye/

65. Ben Prendergast
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

    Despite Basecamp being our largest competitor, 37 Signals are given too much credit in this instance.

    For a privately held company with no published earnings and regularly bloated user numbers (which surprise surprise include free accounts) if the proprietors of Feedlounge did base their decisions off Jason Fried’s comments then is that really Jason’s fault?

66. David Mackey
    

    August 14th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

    37Signals is a darling company right now for the media, surprised by the downer article.

67. Michael Arrington
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 2:35 am

    Love the comments.

    Remember the 37S mantra, which is effectively “you must charge for your software or else you are stupid and you are hurting those of us who charge.” Charging for software often makes sense. It also often does not. In those cases where it doesn’t, we point it out. And 37S goes on the attack.

    You can see this post as an attack on them, but it is really just an attack on their cult and ideology, which I think is dangerous and stupid. There are many ways to make money on software. Those that don’t charge are not necessarily wrong.

    You should also read their post, which I linked to above. It was the first shot in this most recent volley between us.

    http://www.37signals.com/svn/p.....eing-free?

    Jason says software is valuable and so the customer must pay. If everyone listened to Jason Fried, we wouldn’t have Skype. Or free webmail (before hotmail, we didn’t). Or any of the other free desktop or web applications that we all use every day and make our life better. All of those free software products were created with a profit motive. Many became massively successful and made their founders a lot of money.

    Now, back to the disagreement. I went no harder at them than they went at us. I doubt they are losing any sleep over this, just as I didn’t over their post. We’re all big boys and able to handle a little disagreement. They fired a ridiculous and sensationalist blog post in our direction. I fired back. And the next time I see Jason, I’m sure we’ll shake hands and have a beer.

    Different viewpoints are fine. I value the fact that our readers feel free to disagree with me so vehemently. By contrast, discord is not in general permitted by the community that comments on their blog. You must join the cult or get slammed.

    I’ve said this many, many times. You can disagree with me. You can comment to that on this blog. You can even stop reading. But you are not going to change the way I run this site. I write what I believe is true and I will continue to do so.

68. Cameron Barrett
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 4:49 am

    “They fired a ridiculous and sensationalist blog post in our direction. I fired back.”

    Is that really what you think TechCrunch readers want?

    Please stick to the tech/Web 2.0 reporting and leave the pissing matches to private email.

69. Jeff Vick
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    Michael - thanks for being honest and letting your readers know that you created a post for the single purpose of “getting back” at another site which simply pointed out an error in intern Nick’s thinking. I can only imagine if someone mentions that another one is wrong, oh the horror! Scare tactics work well in Web 2.0 land.

    It’s too bad that you didnt put that comment into the initial post when it went live so taht your readers on the rss would know why you really created this post.

    So from now on we must always wonder if a TC post is for real or a get-back attack.

70. Matt
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 6:17 am

    This was a very poorly researched post if you think that feedlounge was making any of its decisions based off of anything 37s has ever said.

    I don’t necessarily disagree with the point you’re trying to make about 37s, but by using feedlounge as an example, you pretty much shot yourself in the foot and made me no longer have any faith in the credibility of your post.

71. Tayfun Ozturkmen
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 6:22 am

    Mike I agree with you that charging for software is not the only way to make a crust but how you can blame one company folding over another company’s methodology totally baffles me.

    37 signals are masters of the freemium model. The price of their products scale proportionally to the value of them to the client. They’re success as a poster child of web apps and legions happy customers are testaments to this.

    They fired a ridiculous and sensationalist blog post in our direction. I fired back.

    If this blog post was part of your rebuttle then the fact you used the news of a pay-for rss reader going down the dunny to prove your point is kinda week.

72. mariner
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 7:52 am

    MIke,

    Like you really love the comments attacking you….yeah right. You clearly have a monster-sized ego and think you can intimidate folks from taking shots at you and your company’s content. It seems to me like you operate using the same strategies of George Bush to crush all dissenting opinions.

    Similar to your other major $#$-up with the Jason TV thing evolving EMT, you obviously do not accept the fact that you are now a journalist and have to demonstrate journalistic integrity to maintain credibility with your readers.

    Your post is a direct attack on 37S because they called out a RIDCULOUS post by Nick.

    I look forward to the day when a new site run by a real journalist with integrity puts you in the DEADPOOL.

    I hope you don’t start your pror practices of deleting comments here because you classify them as SPAM…executive privilege part of your Bush playbook, eh?

73. Michael Arrington
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Guys, look. At this point this post is on the second or third page of the site. The only people adding comments are those with some sort of overall issue with the post and/or me. The fact that you are saying things like you want TechCrunch dead shows that even further than your ad hominem attacks. So you have zero credibility.

    Like I said, I think this issue is important and needs to be discussed. If you think it’s important, too, get into the discussion in a real, credible way and write a blog post saying your side of things.

    It’s absolutely pointless to try to bully me into submitting to the 37S cult. I believe that cult is dangerous for new startups to fall into and there needs to be a counter viewpoint out there for them to consider.

    You guys can keep ranting all you like but I’m done here.

74. Mike
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    Reading this post and comments i feel like i’m in a sandbox filled with babies. This type of crap makes blogging seem really lame, immature and pointless to those of us who do not consider ourselves to be ‘bloggers’.

    If you people need attention so bad, get a dog.

75. BlogReader
    

    August 15th, 2007 at 10:08 pm

    [ Michael : But you are not going to change the way I run this site. I write what I believe is true and I will continue to do so. ]

    Wow I can almost hear the band playing in the background with fireworks exploding. Mike will not be intimidated!!1!

    One thing this post has been good for is that the strawman (37S is the suxors) has come full circle with Michael now saying the people “attacking” him are trying to change what TC is. Almost as entertaining as The Hills.

76. fred
    

    August 17th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    Your are such an egomaniac Mike. It does not take long searching the Web to find several folks that feel the same way about you. I would not be surprised if you drove a Hummer.

77. Adam
    

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:36 pm

    So, who wants to help me create a suite of products superior to 37S’s and make them FREE, anyone up for it? I guess it will take about a week or so.