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People Bashing TechCrunch For No Good Reason

Mike just wrote on CrunchNotes a quick summary of the past week or two in his professional life, namely how some people are feeling entitled to a review just because their competitor was reviewed. What? Do people think TechCrunch is CNN or something?

Last week Mike wrote about Maya’s Mom, and in the comments someone from a competing company left a comment that basically said “oh you write about them and not us, what’s up with that?” and tried to convince Mike to give them some link-love. First off, leaving a comment on a competitor’s review looks incredibly bad and I can’t believe how many times I see this at TechCrunch. The only way that it doesn’t look bad is when somebody else not affiliated with the company posts the link, or, a few dozen links in the case of Cork’d fans commenting at the WineLog review.

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Socialtext Gets Cheeky Over JotSpot Purchase

Wiki startup JotSpot was acquired Tuesday by Google (Techmeme discussion) and I think it’s a very smart move for all parties. JotSpot is one of the few companies that earnestly put design and the user’s experience above other things, and I’m sure this did not go unnoticed by Google.

Amidst the congratulatory reach-arounds was an entry on the Socialtext blog by well-known entrepreneur and Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. A quote:

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Odeo Gets “Bought”, Vox Goes Live

Odeo’s Buyback Rodeo
Yesterday the news came down that Odeo (the fun little podcast startup) is shifting gears bigtime and transitioning to greener pastures and bigger/better things. In what’s got to be the most interesting “Web 2.0” industry story of the past few weeks, Ev Williams used (I estimate) a few million dollars of his own money to buy back the shares he originally sold to VCs when the company started. Now, Odeo.com is owned by Ev’s new company Obvious Corp. and he’s psyched because he now has the control he wants to experiment and produce services that don’t have to be tied down by his investors’ wishes. Damn, if that doesn’t show Ev’s enormous conviction then I don’t know what does. I’m excited to see what Odeo morphs into and what new products they’ve got coming. It just goes to show that as soon as the investors come in, your control goes out, and Ev wanted it back.

Update: Investor Mark Evans posts his thoughts and I think he misses the point completely, saying that the reason it happened is because the VCs had little interest in Odeo and that they were low on money or about to run out. Mark, this isn’t Ev trying to save a sinking ship, it’s him using 7 figures of his own money to buy back control and do what he wants to do, not what his investors think will make the best exit strategy. My comment over there goes into a little bit more detail.

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