[Movement Against Silicon Valley's Conflicts of Interest, Episode 1]
It seems that the level of conflict of interests for some well known names in Silicon Valley is reaching its top.
Today, I came across this blog post (in italian) that points out a “ghost” blog post that appeared on TechCrunch and that suddenly disappeared.
In this post a TechCrunch writer, after having praised Seesmic, promoted an initiative, “Seesmic Sunday”, inviting readers to record a video in response to his own video (using Seesmic) and informing that the best 5 videos would have been posted on TechCrunch.
Here is the screenshot of the post:
This post, which permalink is still available here, has been suddenly removed from TechCrunch. This is good, since the founder of TechCrunch has invested in Seesmic. What is not good is that a TechCrunch writer worked out an article like that. Are you asking me to believe that Seesmic neither Michael Arrington were aware of that?
Ok, do you like the idea of “Seesmic Sunday”? With my company’s Hictu!, no conflict of interest, no one other than my company has invested in that service (yet), no problem! Why don’t you go on with your interesting initiative? “Hictu! Sunday” is ready to go… best 5 videos on TechCrunch? Cool! Let’s do that!
Ops, sorry, I think it can’t work with Hictu!, since no one in TechCrunch has personal interests (MONEY interests) in our service. Sorry, my mistake.
conflict of interests, luca filigheddu, luca filigheddu, seesmic, techcrunch
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You mean even their “disclosures” in posts when they are investors aren’t enough?!? Kidding, the conflicts are ridiculous. Nonetheless, they didn’t keep Edgeio from going to the “deadpool”
No, disclosures are great and usually Michael Arrington is quite clear with that. But, if you run a powerful and popular website like that and you invested in a company, is not fair promoting it that way.
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