MG loves calling bullshit on people, but someone needs to call bullshit on him this time.
If this were Android instead of iOS, MG would be condemning Google for exposing the API. And if this were some obscure startup he didn't have a stake in, he'd be lambasting them for being irresponsible and calling for an app store ban. I would expect nothing less from him.
Clearly there's a conflict of interest here since MG is an investor in Path. Either way, his defense of Path's behavior is itself completely asinine; so much so that I'm surprise he was able to physically type the words.
They needed the data to "ease the connection building process." Bullshit. The whole point of Path is that it's the anti-Facebook. That is, you only share your Path with intimately close friends and family. If I can’t pick them out of my address book myself, I've got problems a social app can’t solve. And, by the way, how the hell is Path going to look at my address book and distinguish my best friend from my plumber?
SSL? Bullshit. Just because Path was using SSL doesn't make up for the fact that they were storing a copy of the data without telling the user. A server breach is far more damaging than a man-in-the-middle attack. At the very least, they should have informed the users of the risk they were taking.
"Other apps do it, too." Bullshit. That doesn't make it okay. There are plenty of developers who could copy all sorts of data without you knowing. I'm sure some do, but lots don't. It's a choice. You can choose whether or not to be creepy.
I love MG's writing and I usually agree with what he says, but I think he's letting his loyalties get in the way here, so much so that he’s willing to be hypocritical.
At the very least, they should have informed the users of the risk they were taking... There are plenty of developers who could copy all sorts of data without you knowing.
I think this is the whole crux of this issue. Hardly anything is private anymore. Today, people are willing to share data, but they demand control^ over it. If you just ask for the data, people will give it most of the time (especially when they went through the process of downloading your app and/or creating an account for your service). It's when you start doing things in the background that people start to question your motives & they feel like they have been conned into doing something they shouldn't have. A little transparency goes a long way.
>And yet, very few people call bullshit on the bullshit.
Interesting, coming from a guy who (in my humble opinion) writes as much bullshit as anybody, and actually moved to a personal blog that doesn't allow commenting. You know, so that people can call him on his bullshit.
Ironically, this is probably the best MG piece I've read, as it describes nicely how I've always felt about his TechCrunch writing.
So, now that MG is now on the business end of the tech blog echochamber and allowed at the big boys table where "people/startups are willing to share information with me that they never would have when I was a blogger", it is all bullshit, facts be damned, and lazy. Also, conveniently as a blogger who has devoted himself to one company, apparently good writers can really only know one or two companies at a time.
If MG had a modicum of self awareness, I'd buy it, but this just reads like a high school senior who knows the real secret dope about how the world works and is just dying to tell you. And also a great example of changing the topic rather than dealing with your/your company's mistakes head on.
MG is right that much of what gets written in blogs and the press is BS. That's a truth that is not confined to technology. And of course to MG it seems like "it's getting worse"--from his perspective it is, because he is crossing over to the other side of the information asymmetry.
It is an asymmetry that is purposefully and carefully maintained by businesses and investors. MG himself could help better "align the sides" by simply publishing or sharing this new info he is privy to. But he won't.
So I hesitate to lay all the blame at the feet of bloggers and journalists. They are doing the best they can with the info they scrounge up or are given.
Daniel Ellsberg's meditation on the limits of knowledge is applicable to this type of situation IMO.
I do agree with the main thrust of article, but also think he and Michael are big hypocrites for complaining about it. TC is and was the Fox News of tech - all controversy and sensationalism, zero real discourse or educated insights.
It's all well and good for MG and Arrington to say these things, VCs aren't the ones who're going to be called up to face the FTC. In all my dealings with VC-types, they've tended to be pretty cavalier when it comes to advising founders how to treat users' private data, maybe because they themselves aren't really on the firing line. Hockey-stick growth is more important to them; if the money comes, the fines will be paid and all will be well. This is business. Sony's still making money, after all. And Facebook, look at Facebook! Just look at that S-1 glow! I'm blinded, that's for sure.
But founders and fellow entrepreneurs, we need to hash this out internally (pardon the pun): Sure, harvesting address books can gain you explosive growth, but at what eventual cost? Can you really sleep at night? George opted in to address book sharing to find his friends in your shiny new app, but he didn't really think that his CEO would get a push notification saying "'GeorgeTheFurryStud' would like to talk to you!" when his CEO eventually signed up. Even if you're using SSL, even if you're hashing addresses (which isn't a cure-all, being able to intuit connections divulges a lot of info), are your servers really that secure? And what if you're not Facebook? It's highly unlikely that you're even in the league (no offense, none of us are).
Either way, politics is afoot here. Would advise other founders and developers to do what they believe is right & lawful, and not bow to pressure or any of this "no one cares about privacy" stuff, 'cause while the money guys and gals may lose a little investment, we're ultimately responsible for our companies' actions. It's us (and our companies, and our users, and our team) on the line here.
I went to journalism school and spent a little time afterwards writing for money before taking an entrepreneurial tack.
A year or so into that, I realized it was really hard to take seriously any business reporting that wasn't coming from someone who had actually run a business or startup reporting from someone who had actually started a company. My journalist friends would cry foul, but unless you've been the person faced with the daunting task of "finding a market" for a new product or "scaling a sales channel" after one's been discovered, I'm not going to pay too much heed to your criticisms of others efforts to do so.
I think that's what Mr. Siegler is getting at when he says he now realizes all the tech writing out there is full of crap. Some of the bloggers out there own their operations and have built real businesses out of it and so have a lot of authority when it comes to writing about other companies. This does not describe many of the contributors I see on major blogs though, so I take their posts with a grain of salt.
I agree with you, and MG Siegler, by extension, that most tech writing is crap. The best writing I've seen is always by technical professionals, rather than journalists assigned to write about technology. However I count Siegler as in the latter camp. He's a fanboy and he's never built anything.
With his article above he's saying "this criticism of a company I'm involved with isn't valid, because these people aren't technically expert". That's wrong because you don't need to be a technical expert to value and appreciate personal privacy, which is the key issue. It's also hypocritical, because he's not a technical expert himself. Like the people he complains about, he makes his money from hype generated around products, without being capable of making his own product.
I agree, and I don't even read Techcrunch. For me, what really hits home is all the advice you can get about entrepreneurship, and startups, and winning, and whatnot - and you're starting to get it from kids who literally have no idea what they're talking about, who have never actually started a company, and who are doing nothing more than spouting some kind of Jobsian rhetoric mixed with a dash of old Paul Graham essays.
But everyone wants to be influential, and everyone wants to be read, and the best way to get read is to write what people want to hear, and your writing doesn't need to be especially introspective or well-revised in order to give people their five-minute content fix.
I agree with the sentiment that it's all about pageviews. The people who focus on the company and get to spend time to write on it are usually analysts rather than journalists or bloggers. They're goal is not pageviews because the content is usually not geared towards mass market and would be focused at niche audiences.
tl;dr = "Company Not That Bad, says man working for Investment Fund with stake in the First Company"
Let's not question that source!
TechCrunch has the most punchable "journalists" I've ever seen, not including tabloids. As for one of their people accusing others of writing shit just for the pageviews, that's staggeringly hypocritical.
Also CrunchFund is a scam. Hire a popular hack, pay him to talk up a new venture, guaranteed business. It's as ethical as insider trading. Bad shit. Leads to lots of crappy "me-too" startups doing better than they deserve.
I'm pretty sure even if he'd read it he'd still mangle it. MG's not exactly known for his prose, just his unapologetic opinions and perhaps connections.
I wish I had a machine that would search articles for phrases like "my CrunchFund partner Michael Arrington" and mark the article as 100% not credible.
[+] [-] rsobers|14 years ago|reply
If this were Android instead of iOS, MG would be condemning Google for exposing the API. And if this were some obscure startup he didn't have a stake in, he'd be lambasting them for being irresponsible and calling for an app store ban. I would expect nothing less from him.
Clearly there's a conflict of interest here since MG is an investor in Path. Either way, his defense of Path's behavior is itself completely asinine; so much so that I'm surprise he was able to physically type the words.
They needed the data to "ease the connection building process." Bullshit. The whole point of Path is that it's the anti-Facebook. That is, you only share your Path with intimately close friends and family. If I can’t pick them out of my address book myself, I've got problems a social app can’t solve. And, by the way, how the hell is Path going to look at my address book and distinguish my best friend from my plumber?
SSL? Bullshit. Just because Path was using SSL doesn't make up for the fact that they were storing a copy of the data without telling the user. A server breach is far more damaging than a man-in-the-middle attack. At the very least, they should have informed the users of the risk they were taking.
"Other apps do it, too." Bullshit. That doesn't make it okay. There are plenty of developers who could copy all sorts of data without you knowing. I'm sure some do, but lots don't. It's a choice. You can choose whether or not to be creepy.
I love MG's writing and I usually agree with what he says, but I think he's letting his loyalties get in the way here, so much so that he’s willing to be hypocritical.
[+] [-] dfxm12|14 years ago|reply
I think this is the whole crux of this issue. Hardly anything is private anymore. Today, people are willing to share data, but they demand control^ over it. If you just ask for the data, people will give it most of the time (especially when they went through the process of downloading your app and/or creating an account for your service). It's when you start doing things in the background that people start to question your motives & they feel like they have been conned into doing something they shouldn't have. A little transparency goes a long way.
^This is, of course, the hard part.
[+] [-] tatsuke95|14 years ago|reply
Interesting, coming from a guy who (in my humble opinion) writes as much bullshit as anybody, and actually moved to a personal blog that doesn't allow commenting. You know, so that people can call him on his bullshit.
Ironically, this is probably the best MG piece I've read, as it describes nicely how I've always felt about his TechCrunch writing.
[+] [-] unimpressive|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kylekramer|14 years ago|reply
If MG had a modicum of self awareness, I'd buy it, but this just reads like a high school senior who knows the real secret dope about how the world works and is just dying to tell you. And also a great example of changing the topic rather than dealing with your/your company's mistakes head on.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|14 years ago|reply
It is an asymmetry that is purposefully and carefully maintained by businesses and investors. MG himself could help better "align the sides" by simply publishing or sharing this new info he is privy to. But he won't.
So I hesitate to lay all the blame at the feet of bloggers and journalists. They are doing the best they can with the info they scrounge up or are given.
Daniel Ellsberg's meditation on the limits of knowledge is applicable to this type of situation IMO.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-li...
[+] [-] justinlau|14 years ago|reply
They helped make this beast.
[+] [-] dbappdev|14 years ago|reply
But founders and fellow entrepreneurs, we need to hash this out internally (pardon the pun): Sure, harvesting address books can gain you explosive growth, but at what eventual cost? Can you really sleep at night? George opted in to address book sharing to find his friends in your shiny new app, but he didn't really think that his CEO would get a push notification saying "'GeorgeTheFurryStud' would like to talk to you!" when his CEO eventually signed up. Even if you're using SSL, even if you're hashing addresses (which isn't a cure-all, being able to intuit connections divulges a lot of info), are your servers really that secure? And what if you're not Facebook? It's highly unlikely that you're even in the league (no offense, none of us are).
Either way, politics is afoot here. Would advise other founders and developers to do what they believe is right & lawful, and not bow to pressure or any of this "no one cares about privacy" stuff, 'cause while the money guys and gals may lose a little investment, we're ultimately responsible for our companies' actions. It's us (and our companies, and our users, and our team) on the line here.
[+] [-] benologist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warmfuzzykitten|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandnewlow|14 years ago|reply
A year or so into that, I realized it was really hard to take seriously any business reporting that wasn't coming from someone who had actually run a business or startup reporting from someone who had actually started a company. My journalist friends would cry foul, but unless you've been the person faced with the daunting task of "finding a market" for a new product or "scaling a sales channel" after one's been discovered, I'm not going to pay too much heed to your criticisms of others efforts to do so.
I think that's what Mr. Siegler is getting at when he says he now realizes all the tech writing out there is full of crap. Some of the bloggers out there own their operations and have built real businesses out of it and so have a lot of authority when it comes to writing about other companies. This does not describe many of the contributors I see on major blogs though, so I take their posts with a grain of salt.
[+] [-] puppybeard|14 years ago|reply
With his article above he's saying "this criticism of a company I'm involved with isn't valid, because these people aren't technically expert". That's wrong because you don't need to be a technical expert to value and appreciate personal privacy, which is the key issue. It's also hypocritical, because he's not a technical expert himself. Like the people he complains about, he makes his money from hype generated around products, without being capable of making his own product.
[+] [-] aba_sababa|14 years ago|reply
But everyone wants to be influential, and everyone wants to be read, and the best way to get read is to write what people want to hear, and your writing doesn't need to be especially introspective or well-revised in order to give people their five-minute content fix.
[+] [-] hoi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puppybeard|14 years ago|reply
TechCrunch has the most punchable "journalists" I've ever seen, not including tabloids. As for one of their people accusing others of writing shit just for the pageviews, that's staggeringly hypocritical.
Also CrunchFund is a scam. Hire a popular hack, pay him to talk up a new venture, guaranteed business. It's as ethical as insider trading. Bad shit. Leads to lots of crappy "me-too" startups doing better than they deserve.
[+] [-] jjude|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defrost|14 years ago|reply
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
^^^
Is there a word for alluding to a classic as though you've read it and yet mangling it enough to broadcast that you haven't?
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnQPasserby|14 years ago|reply