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.
Someone from MothersClick (the un-reviewed company) wrote this comment about the situation:
“Actually, I was involved in a startup competitor to Maya’s Mom and we tried to get prelaunch press from Arrington months ago (around the same time as he first announced Maya’s Mom) but he wouldn’t give us the time of day. Now that our site launched (about 2 weeks ago), Arrington has still ignored us, despite press releases and direct contact…and now he’s pimping Maya’s Mom…which is owned by a former colleague and friend of his. Fuck Arrington’s biased ass. He as no credibility anymore.”
Hmm, maybe the reason he didn’t write about the other company is because he didn’t want to, or didn’t like it ever think that? Since when does Mike’s blog have to give equal treatment to all companies in a particular space? Do I care if he knows the entrepreneurs or the investors of a particular company? No of course not, I’m not an idiot, I know that there might be some behind-closed-doors stuff going on but that’s why I’m a human being blessed with free will and the ability to investigate news stories further from other sources. Everything in the world is biased — people you talk to, radio shows you listen to, TV shows you watch, newspapers and magazines you read — you can’t hide from it, it’s a part of daily life.
Here on this site I write about whatever companies I want to, I’m not going to write a fluff review just because somebody pesters me with press releases. Just because TechCrunch is crazy popular doesn’t mean that forces Mike to run the site a certain way, he owns the site, he can do whatever he wants with it. If he wants to write about his friends or companies he may be more familiar with, then he has every right in the world to do so.
If you’re expecting stories to be completely free for subjectivity and opinion, maybe you should go read the New York Times. Ah shit, nevermind.