While his email may have been a bit harsh, that isn’t the point in any way shape or form. Point is, we should have never known about it, as Michael should never have posted it publicly. I think it may have been a way for him to heal his bruised ego. He should have kept the whole conversation private and dealt with Sean however he wished in a simple, personal response. I see Michael as the incredibly unprofessional one here. Seems he doesn’t take criticism very well, and his actions may have a profound negative effect on Sean’s business. I don’t think Sean was asking for that by simply throwing some criticism (privately, not to mention) at someone who should have a bit thicker skin.

Read his post on his blog and he says he is sorry. If I were Michael, I would write another post about the company in general and tell specific more about his new ad-on. the way it should have been done. nice email, honest review, comments, success or not! that’s the use of techcrunch… TC tells us what we should look at. NOT TC decides success, WE DO…the audience in NEED!

I do want to address one thing though. I read Techdirt and The Technology Liberation Front blogs, and I am new to TechCrunch. One of the things Techdirt has taught me is that most people who are in the startup industry as well as those of us who want better products that don’t cost us an arm and a leg, don’t like the intellectual property laws as they stand. Patents are ‘infringed’, all the while being used to stifle innovation. On the one hand we want better products and more free information and tools, but on the other hand we call someone a copycat and the application he created a ‘ripoff’. I don’t know. Maybe the people who said that don’t care about innovation and standing on the shoulders of the previous generation to make advancements. I could be wrong.

Sean, I hope it goes well for you, and that you learn something of a lesson from this. Good luck.

“Dare, it isn’t what you wrote, but WHY you wrote it. You are a representative of Microsoft and you just trashed a journalist who wrote about your company. And you didn’t even read the damn post very carefully – I defended MS.”:

Unless I’ve taken something out of context but I believe you are referring to yourself…just thought I’d mention that.

I wince at people judging him based on this e-mail.

First off, I think posting emails (business to business, business to personal, personal to business) without both parties knowledge beforehand is nothing more than unprofessional for this type of site — and churlish, to agree with Adam above, for a blog post.

That said, as a business professional I try to keep in mind that if a person ends up feeling attacked, undermined, or even overly proud because of comments I make in an email or post, it could possibly be posted or distributed without my knowledge or consent.

This just seems all too childish for a TechCrunch post, IMHO. To me, the poster looks worse off than the original offender — “Well, he hit me first, Mom. So I punched him back.”

But I guess in the end, both parties got more traffic at the cost of possibly tarnished reputations.

Sean of getclicky has always been friendly and responsive whenever I’ve emailed him. Nobody was really hurt and what he said wasn’t even that offensive. Clicky is the best analytics tool I’ve ever seen and I wish it continued success.

James

Santiago @ http://www.cuoma.com