Mike Arrington Hits New Low in Swiss Alps
January 25th, 2008 by Bullshit MancusoOn TechCrunch, Jack Michael Arrington Jr. digs into the Dave Winer wayback machine to refight a three-year-old argument about running ads on blogs:
Robert Scoble, who has long been proud of the fact that his popular blog remains free of advertisements or sponsorships, will soon put ads on his site, he told me yesterday. …
Scoble and Dave Winer have been the main proponents of advertising-free blogs over the years, arguing that it creates conflicts that should be avoided. In 2005, when we first put ads on TechCrunch, Winer wrote a long comment expressing disappointment and regretting linking to the site, and followed up with a podcast on the issue. He’s been writing about this since at least 2000.
This isn’t the first time Scoble has run into issues around financial conflicts of interest, but it’s the first time it directly involved his personal blog. So Scoble has changed his tune. Will Winer be next?
Winer slams bloggers who run ads, believing that it’s wrong to directly make money from your blog. This is, of course, easy for him to say. He doesn’t need blog ad income, thanks to VeriSign’s Weblogs.Com boondoggle.
But in this fight, Winer is completely, 100 percent, makes-me-sick-to-admit-this correct when he openly mocks Arrington for being so small-minded:
Mike, I say this with all my heart — stop wasting your time on this bullshit. You have a once in a lifetime opportunity there in Davos to meet new people from industries and professions very far afield of the small petty issue of whether Scoble has ads on his blog or not, or whether I approve of you, or don’t. Go do us and yourself some good out there in the Alps.
The guy’s in Davos, Switzerland with 30 heads of state and dozens of other world political and business leaders confronting issues like climate change, global recession and terrorism, and he’s reporting on Robert Scoble putting ads on his blog!
January 26th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Eye, I have to agree with you. It’s quite amazing that the Economic Forum gave goofs allowed Arrington & Scoble to attend. The “new, new journalism,” I guess. Anyway, they probably realize it’s a mistake. Have you seen the garbage both of these guys have posted? The usual fanboys post gushing “gee, ain’t you great” responses, but it’s thin gruel indeed. And now Arrington uses his great opportunity to opine on —Scoble and online ads!
January 26th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Check out Dave’s mewling - and predictably vapid - post today on Davos and “our correspondents” i.e. arrington & scoble. as usual, it’s beyond mediocre and his ramblings are predictably banal. but his big finish, if that’s how we shall describe it, leaves one wondering whether the boy again is off his meds. if we believe dave about how the mountain air does wonders for his spirit and that one returns full of wisdom, insight, Nietsche-like, why, then, does this guy vent his spleen nearly every single day on people who IMHO, simply are honest Joe’s going about their lives.
It remains a mystery.