TechCrunch Pump n Dump | Hacker News Reader

TechCrunch Pump n Dump

brianshall.com

206 pointsjamesgagan121 comments

TC has always been a big scam under the guise of journalism. And the mailbox example is not even a very good one. I still remember, when I used to frequent TC, they had glowing reviews for startups they were directly involved with. Most of the time they didn't even bother to mention the conflict of interest.

Not to mention Arrington and his monthly quota of manufactured drama.

Worst part, TC always did and still does (though not as much), quite frequently cover most of the frontpage of HN with regurgitated 1 paragraph "news" that has been already discussed to death on other frontpage submission.

How the hell and why the fuck, I have no idea...

"TC has always been a big scam under the guise of journalism."

Why is that a scam? It's only a scam to the people freshly hatched that a) don't know it's a scam or b) can't figure out because they don't read it or other things enough to discover it's a "scam" (not my word just repeating).

Sometimes the reason that "scams" get people upset is the same reason a guy will get mad when another guy gets the girl because of bullshit. And the guy who lost out either has scruples (and feels cheated) or wouldn't ever think that anyone would fall for the particular bullshit that landed the girl.

I have two observations -

1)Our society is structured in pyramids across multiple dimensions. On top of the these pyramids are powerful cliques. The pyramids that are predominantly influenced by the business world have even stronger cliques at the top. People at the top try to optimize for their success, and its only human. So ya, this who pump and dump is not surprising, happens everywhere.

2) Mailbox is a super-sexy acquisition for Dropbox. Because of my work, I am in this unique position to look deeply at around 70 online backup and cloud vendors, their features, their social signal, their pricing etc, their usage scenarios, their usage feedback and I think, given the uber-competitiveness of the space, most of these vendors will either a) move upstream and try to increase the real estate of their clients (Box trying to get into document editing suite is a prime example) or b) have a differentiated offering like egnyte. With this context, I think, the mailbox acquisition is an absolute bomb. I am doing further research on this topic and will hopefully publish it soon.

So yes, the hype-cycle was at work, but its normal and dropbox founders and executive team were pretty much certain they needed to this.

Spot on!

I think the acquisition of mailbox is brilliant! Dropbox, while fantastic is a one dimensional service which in its current form doesn't have much room to innovate around simply storing and synching my data.

With the addition of mailbox, they can start down the path of having the storage layer augmented by services directly on top of it.

Hold on. MG Siegler and Arrington were investors in Mailbox? This kind of conflict is really unacceptable. Bloggers need to get real about ethics if they want to be taken seriously as journalists.

Welcome to the world of web journalism. Outfits like PandoDaily are funded by organisations that back the very startups PandoDaily writes about. Conflict? Psh!

Next you'll tell me that a startup incubator has their own news + commenting site. (Though I personally don't see the conflict.)

There is an outside possibility that pg has rigged HN to give more upvotes to YC-funded companies. It just seems a little unlikely.

You can't know until he open sources it!

It is, minus the bits used for spam and vote abuse detection.

http://arclanguage.org

http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar

I don't think it's rigged as much as human nature. From what I've heard the "admins" (unamed) control what hits the front page and how long it stays there to a certain extent. As such (also from what I've heard) if those admins are YC alumn they would tend to favor YC companies or might even know those people running those YC funded companies.

This isn't the first time and it won't be the last. They do this constantly.

I don't think these people fancy themselves as journalists.

The word "unacceptable" sounds strange in this sentence. It reminds me of PG's essay "Mind the gap"[0], where he discusses the use of the word "(un)fair" in the context of wealth creation and (income and otherwise) equality.

I don't think "acceptable" applies in this particular context, as these are not journalists that have to obey a fixed set of rules and regulations, rather, they are people that will decide, out of their own set of standards and moral, completely subjective to the person.

Ultimately, we have to vote with our eyeballs and clicks and, if you believe that a site/blogger does not match your values, simply don't read them. That said, its hard to get the masses off of bacon and fries, regardless of how bad they are for you.

[0]: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

When is this cycle going to end?

It seems like every time a high profile acquisition takes place there’s a vocal group of people blogging about how the company in question isn’t really “world-disrupting shit Silicon Valley does”.

Have you seen Silicon Valley recently? This is exactly what it does. There’s still a group of companies out there who are taking big chances and trying amazing things, but by and large the ecosystem is full of stuff like Mailbox. Well-made, highly polished software that caters to a specific problem that people with money complain about. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that business model, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that this is some huge affront to the innovation engine that is Silicon Valley.

It won't end, because even those who claim to dislike the practice still wish to be part of it.

"the innovation engine that is Silicon Valley"

Maybe I'm too young, but was there ever a time where Silicon Valley was innovating in the way we wish SV was innovating? It seems like the landscape was like this for a very long time

Steve Blank talks about a lot of interesting RF/defense stuff from ancient times, and of course Intel early on, so the 1970s were great. And Apple. And videogame boom/bust/boom.

I'd consider The Internet, cisco, Sun, Berkeley UNIX, etc. to have been quite innovative. (early 1980s to early 1990s recession)

Arguably the first part of the tech bubble was amazing -- 1995-1998 or so.

I think 2008-2011 was a low period, but that may just correlate with the economic downturn. 2005-2008 was interesting due to AJAX and not much else; that really was the weakest boomlet technically, but I think a lot of it was just proving we could have a boom again, just like GW1 was proving US military involvement didn't automatically mean another Vietnam.

I've seen plenty of awesome stuff in 2012+, and it seems to be accelerating.

Yes, this is how it works in terms of startups trying to gain traction. I imagine it's not just techcrunch that works this way. The startup I worked for got immediate coverage and 60% of the article wasn't even true. Inflating traffic numbers to the nearest million seems like a common practice.

If you know someone, then there is a 100% chance of getting coverage. For everyone else its a crapshoot and certainly not in your favor.

Here is my example:

I tried to get coverage for a fantasy sports startup that solves real problems surrounding player news and getting lineup advice. It even tells you who to pick up on the waiver wire. Got no coverage. Had no exciting investors. It was boring to them.

However, once I launched a side project that enhances the readability of reddit iama's, then I got immediate coverage without even asking for it.

Their (especially true for TC) coverage seems to be focused mainly on investment rounds and exits. It is very unlikely that a random startup would get coverage, if you have no prior exit history, and you are bootstrapping.

That gives me an idea - who wants to launch an anti-TC, dark horse-type service with me? Focus on bootstrapped businesses.

The people who propose these inane conspiracy theories always forget one critical component: why the acquirer was such a willing patsy.

I believe that by definition a patsy is always quite willing.

The OP might be a little off in this case, but I fail to see how this is inane. A publication that is run by someone who has a conflict of interest released a large media blitz that undoubtedly painted Mailbox in a very positive light, leading to an arguably overpriced acquisition.

I honestly don't know enough to make a judgment, but following the money has never lead me wrong before.

You have to believe that Dropbox is idiotic for that to be true. The media is notorious for misreporting deals, you really have to read between the lines to even attempt to see the truth - journalists tend to lack financial training/knowledge. What's more likely?

1)Dropbox is run by idiots who get all excited by reading TechCrunch and Twitter, so they jump at the opportunity to overpay for an unproven app without thinking it through.

or...

2)Mailbox dovetails nicely with Dropbox's plans and culture, and is a solid app to kickstart something that Dropbox would have done themselves anyhow. They get talent to boot. And they pay, not up front, but over time as Mailbox meets the high expectations implied up by a potential value of $100M.

I have no idea what the terms and strategy of that deal were/are, but I'd bet they look a lot more like 2 than 1.

What you're saying is that you think Dropbox values acquisitions by collecting media stories and measuring their sentiments. Have you ever been involved in an acquisition? The ones I've been a party to involved proctological levels of due diligence. The idea that Techcruch coverage even occurred to anyone involved after the first or second meeting is comically naive.

Well, in all fairness (and I do think that the original conspiracy theory is inane, and reflects someone with an axe to grind rather than a rational assessment of the situation) - the actual hype cycle would look more like:

o Write up a great story that makes a product sound amazing o Get lots of people to use it, wait in line o Dropbox values the application based on user engagement stats.

I don't think there is any evidence that Ryan Lawler (the author of the TechCrunch Mailbox Stories) was incented or directed in any way to write them. Indeed, here on HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5389748, he states that he and Arrington/Siegler don't even have any type of special relationship. He's not even sure that Arrington even knows who he is.

With all that said - I just checked, and I've finally (after a month?) made it to the front of the line, so I'm off to chase Inbox Zero!

And who's to say long-term user engagement predictions had anything to do with the valuation? If you were Drew Houston and had all the resources of Dropbox to leverage using what appears to be one of the most popular mobile email applications in the world, what could you come up with? How much would it be worth to have a credible vehicle with which to compete directly with Google Mail, for instance?

I don't know the Dropbox guys but I doubt they take investment advice from Techcrunch. It also doesn't seem likely that Dropbox with its 100 million users bought Mailbox for their 750,000 users.

Why is it so hard for some people to stomach that maybe Dropbox bought Mailbox for the tech or the talent?

Both stands are not mutually exclusive.

I really like Mailbox, it really helps me manage my email better, this was no trivial technical/design execution.

On the other hand, CrunchFund being an investor, and the fantastic duo being "contributors" to TC makes the cynic in me believe that the last four articles were more than "news".

But do you think that is what made Dropbox buy them or that it substantially influenced the price?

In an indirect way, yes. Creating positive noise can attract more buyers/interest to the table, and that can put pressure on serious buyers like Dropbox to increase the price/make the offer sweeter.

I really doubt it was only Dropbox knocking on Mailbox's door. Specially given the rumoured price (I also think there is a large equity component).

Sigh. Doesn't matter what the facts are, this point of view that there is a "conspiracy" always emerges. There is a strange counter phenomena on the other side too sometimes. Sometimes a person at a company and get acquired or go public who suddenly has a high net worth, can't internalize the fact that they are suddenly rich and the people perhaps sitting next to them aren't. A bit flips and they decide its because they are just that smart/good/talented. (which is, for them, easier than just being lucky). It is a weird thing to watch, I saw dozens of cases of it at Sun when Sun went public and recognized it in folks at Google as well.

The brain tries to "explain." Sometimes really implausible scenarios seem to be the best answer [1]. For this particular scenario (TechCrunch somehow "selling" Mailbox to Dropbox) some pretty savvy and experienced people would have to have been "tricked." While the probability is non-zero that that is the case, it is highly unlikely. And the much more boring answer that the Mailbox folks had created something of value to the Dropbox folks remains.

I am more curious why Brian is so invested in the lack of standards at TechCrunch. Why does he care? It's not hard to see they rate somewhere been the Enquirer and the Daily Post in terms of what they will publish to get page views.

[1] Alien abduction is one of those areas where people would rather believe they were abducted by aliens than what ever really happened.

I have a hard time understanding why Dropbox would pay $100M. Compared to the Instagram acquisition, this seems like a blunder.

The talent - Maybe worth $10M at the high end, probably same for Instagram

Future profit - Difficult to see how this app would be profitable, but maybe it could make a few million a year if it swept the app store. Instagram had similar long term monetization potential to facebook.

Technology - Indexing gmail and keeping metadata on each message. A difficult task to scale, but not $10M difficult. Instagram was handling significantly more data, but Facebook certainly didn't need the technology.

Users and momentum - Don't see much value for Dropbox here with 700K users. Instagram was growing rapidly and had 20M+ users.

Time - Dropbox wants to be in the email and communications space... seems like the could have developed something in 6 months for a few million. Instagram would have been difficult for Facebook to catch up with, since head starts matter in social. Email apps don't have the network lock-in, so there is much less reason to worry about time.

Competition - There was no threat to dropbox. Instagram appeared to be dominating a demographic and use case for social, and could easily be seen as a threat to Facebook.

However, Dropbox did pay that much. We have to assume there was a reason other than a Techcrunch article.

I think the OP is giving Tech Crunch a wee bit more credit for king making than they deserve.

Mailbox is a great case of playing the hype game to perfection. Massive hype, perfect fit for a larger "startup" playing with house monopoly money - it all adds up to a huge win.

Just be happy for the guys. They haven't even gotten started yet- let them give it a go.

I am glad someone is actually writing about this. We live in an era where we've learned to accept the things around us - No matter how good or bad they are, but we've over the last few decades, started to accept the things that are going around us, and accept compromise, slowly.

News organizations like Techcrunch, Gizmodo, etc. are some of the most arrogant, unethical organizations you will ever find on this planet. I say unethical because of how they work. In the REAL WORLD, journalism works by having REAL journalists, who travel places, meet new people, explore new problems, explore un-identified areas of coverage and report them as news.

But, the internet revolutionized journalism so much that it's so screwed up right now. In the online world, all you need to call yourself a 'journalist' or a 'media organization' is just a hosted Wordrpess blog with a custom domain. And that's just it. The worst part is the content - Where journalism by itself is known for the kind of content it provides, this is totally eliminated. In many ways, an online journalist has not much work to do, when say compared to a real life journalist. The information he wants to report on is RIGHT THERE. Just go to news.google.com, news.ycombinator.com, reddit.com, find some controversial (most cases) topic to write about, add some opinions and publish it as a post. BINGO! Just watch the comments pour in and pageviews explode! And profit!!!

Do you know what is unethical about this setup?

These so called 'journalists' are basically thieves. They 'steal' from an open community like reddit or hackernews, add their own flavors and spin it off into a new article. I want you to browse through the whole list of articles on Gizmodo and Techcrunch and compare it with the sh*t these organizations write and tell me this is not true. You will easily notice that majority of the content is ripped off from the open communities.

These so called organizations and the idiots calling themselves journalists are a shame to the true essence of Journalism. Because what they are supposed to write about is the news and not what they think of it. I am sick of reading anti-Google posts and pro-Apple (or vice-versa) articles on these shitty so called 'news' sites. I want to read true, unbiased, uncolored content. I want to read the news and not what a random author thinks of the news. And I know someday someone will realize this and create a true 'Wikipedia' for news. And that will be the greatest 'FUCK YOU' sent to these unethical organizations in the history of man kind, ever.

(Disclosure: I independently comment a lot on TechCrunch articles.)

While I definitely agree that the acquisition of $100 million is absurd, I don't think it can be solely attributed to TechCrunch's coverage, given that other sites like GigaOm and The Verge also gave large amounts of coverage.

The relationship between the writers/CrunchFund is overstated: https://twitter.com/ryanlawler/status/313297205186408451 EDIT: article updated with Tweet

Also, large amounts of TC press does not mean success: (see http://techcrunch.com/tag/airtime/ )

Guys, this is an under-informed and reactionary post, which grossly simplifies the situation in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team. It's also kind of upsetting that this post is at the top of HN and getting a kind of froth-at-the-mouth reaction that it is.

It's well-known and indeed massively controversial[1] that there's a CrunchFund/TechCrunch conflict. Arrington left TechCrunch because of his desire to return to investing about a year ago[2], after the short stint at doing both journalism and investing in parallel. According to CrunchBase, this was coincidentally the same month that CrunchFund invested in Orchestra[3]. Both he and MG returned in October 2012[4], but both have hardly written any TC pieces since then. Why? Probably because they're quite busy with their day jobs running CrunchFund.

Additionally, on many posts with CrunchFund conflicts, they have been called out at the end of each article (see http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/andreessen-horowitz-adds-je...). They probably have been a bit lax about that as of late since the CrunchFund guys aren't really involved in TC (compared with the often torrential output of most other staff writers).

TechCrunch coverage did probably get Mailbox some users, and CrunchFund as a VC probably did add some value to their company, but the effects and importance of TechCrunch itself are wildly overstated. Probably more important is that the Mailbox/Orchestra team is top notch at making incredible mobile products (Orchestra won one of Apple's Top App award in 2011 http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app-of-2...), had hundreds of thousands of active users within a very short amount of time (with only a tiny insignificant fraction of those coming from TC), and Dropbox can probably provide a better home for a lot of the Really Hard problems with email at that kind of scale.

Like I get why OP seems alarmed, but it's pretty naive to think that TechCrunch matters in any important way to the success or financial outcome of a company. Just read about the "TechCrunch pop"[5]; their users rarely not stay with or give lasting value to a product. If you want to belittle the astounding accomplishments of the Mailbox team, at least don't pick something like TechCrunch to do it over.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/technology/michael-arringt...

[2]: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/michael-arrington-leav...

[3]: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra

[4]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/getting-the-band-back-toget...

[5]: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/11/19/the-depressing-day-aft...

It's also a little insulting that OP thinks Dropbox is stupid. They paid $100m (or whatever the number was) for a lot of reasons and I'd suspect that TechCrunch really likes Mailbox isn't one of them. I'd suspect the number of people on a wait list isn't near the top of the list either.

Number of people on the wait list is kinda significant. Call it a marketing list if you want and you'll realise there's definite value there.

I don't think the parent is saying there's not value in that wait list. I think he's saying that Dropbox probably valued the team, Mailbox's standalone potential, and potential synergies more than just the "marketing list".

Both really. Whatever monetary value you would put on that marketing list is tiny compared to the reported sum. Give me a few hundred grand and I'll get you that good of a mailing list. Dropbox doesn't need to spend 10s of millions on that.

Yup. It's not like they paid cash. I would be shocked if that price tag was not mostly stock, and tied to future performance. Details matter here, and everyone getting in a huff over something they really don't know about is just wasted emotion.

From the standpoint of the little guy trying to get his product / service heard, this kind of thing can be pretty irksome. Someone else linked to this orgasmic description of the mailbox service going down: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/with-20-of-reservations-fil... -- meanwhile in the comments, someone mentions that there's an app called TaskBoxApp that solves the same problem and is 100% client side so doesn't suffer the privacy concerns. Has TC ever mentioned that one? http://techcrunch.com/search/taskboxapp I don't read TC, I don't have any affiliation with any of these apps, but I find this kind of behavior really ridiculous. There can be no doubt that the front-page coverage of Mailbox contributed to an increase in signups. The Dropbox acquisition is what it is -- I'm sure they can value an investment despite its hype or overhype.

"From the standpoint of the little guy trying to get his product / service heard, this kind of thing can be pretty irksome."

Specifically "little guy". I fail to understand why people seem to think that life is fair (hasn't changed and never will) and why people also seem to think that the existing filters and people that determine success don't still exist. They do and they always will.

Who said life is fair or has to be fair -- I said the behavior was irksome. I actually think it points to a market need for a tech journal covering startups that has integrity. I'd love to read that.

Define integrity? And I'm not trying to be facetious, just curious where the slippery slope begins.

We could start with "what you right doesn't potentially change your net worth."

Irksome it may be. If you were Michael Arrington though, would you do anything to further your competitors' position at the cost of your own? I dislike his arrogance, but have to wonder what I'd do in his shoes...

...you do the right thing. You give competitors fair coverage. Period. Let the users decide.

I am sure there were good reasons for the the purchase that we cannot know due to not being part of dropbox management. The article is insulting towards dropbox, but I think the summation of the article is in the headline, "pump n dump", and no matter what people say the media has an unquantifiable effect on creating hype, and inflating value of anything, person,brand,etc in general. And do the mentioned relations matter in such deals happening as the article mentions - without a doubt. So perhaps, the article is a bit hostile and the top response on this thread points out many sources and is a good defensive response, the main point of the article is something that happens often, this deal or another deal - its reality.

Well said.

It also wasn't just TechCrunch who had articles about Mailbox. The Verge had 4 articles in less than a month.

Pretty much every tech news website had quite a few articles about Mailbox, as well as major blogs like Daring Fireball which have a huge readership of iPhone users.

It seems weird to me that this blog post attributes the entire success of Mailbox to TechCrunch, when really, Mailbox's success is because they created a simple and enjoyable email app.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/22/3903302/mailbox-for-iphone... http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for-iph... http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3962414/mailbox-hands-on-vi... http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/14/3988872/mailbox-email-ipho... http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/02/07/mailbox

Fast forward into couple years from now, what they doing today will be investigated by FTC by default and consider a crime punishable by law, regardless of how many pretty words you use to describe this scheme.

Just because its not illegal per se, does not mean its moral, but we human will go to any extent to make a buck (as you know as little as 150 years ago it was legal to own people and abuse them and force to work).

EDIT: had they been publicly traded (thanks ghshephard)

You are aware that Neither Mailbox (and Dropbox for that matter) are publicly traded? What interest do you think the FTC would have here? Do you believe there are Monopolistic, False Advertising, or other consumer protection issues at stake?

>" in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team"

Arrington is a jerk and MG is a talentless shill. They're both "right place, right time" guys who strut around with undeserved influence. I care little about insulting Techcrunch/AOL or Crunchfund.

When banks do things like this, we call for heads. When it's SV personalities, we're apologists.

>"Arrington left TechCrunch because of his desire to return to investing about a year ago"

You say left, I say forced out, because there was an obvious conflict of interest.

>" Probably more important is that the Mailbox/Orchestra team is top notch at making incredible mobile products"

That's nice. I suppose we'll agree to disagree that a company that built an app that sits on gmail is worth $100MM.

If you were born into a middle class American family in the late 20th century and have no major disabilities you are a "right place right time" person. The just world hypothesis is false - most people with any kind of power had immense luck and opportunity going for them irrespective of their talent or ability.

Arrington and MG may be many things, but they've fought and scrambled in the face of a lot of obstacles and naysayers to get where they are today. Arrington in particular, grew Techcrunch from a blog in his bedroom to the major presence that is today. Siegler is a talented writer, and has a lot of interesting technology insights. He also has a good eye for up and coming companies - which is obviously why Arrington recruited him as a General Partner for Crunch Fund.

I don't know Arrington personally, so I can't comment on the jerk comment.

Feel free to critique them for what they are, but let's be reasonable and respect them for what they've done. Saying that they've accomplished is a result of "undeserved influence" belittles that.

>"Siegler is a talented writer, and has a lot of interesting technology insights."

You and I are worlds apart on what a "talented writer" is. Case-in-point: John Gruber is what I would consider a talented tech writer.

MG is a reasonably good writer. He's an even better hustler and has terrific sources, two invaluable assets for what he does. Gruber has all three assets as well but is even more exclusive in what he writes about.

You totally bungled this one.

It embarrasses me to see comments like this getting upvoted on HN. There is no information in it, just inflammatory language. When this sort of comment prevails on HN, we'll have sunk to the ground state of forums.

I subscribe to broken windows theory and think we should discourage any instance of sarcasm, adhom, and other inappropriate methods of arguing, no matter how small, so that larger transgressions look awfully out of place. It would help if you updated the rules with explicit ban on those things. It might also help to have a sort of discourse police - mods should not only ban for bad behavior but make it publicly visible.

I'm never surprised to see these sorts of comments even in discussion forums that I hold in high esteem, such as HN. As an engineer, I've seen pretty heated arguments about very silly things such as whose editor is better. These are generally very intelligent people, but are susceptible to cognitive dissonance. Rational discourse goes out the window at that point, because they're convinced they're right and it's impossible that other view points may be correct. It's part of the reason most of the world is still religious.

I bet you if there were down votes allowed on HN, this post would be about dead even, because tons of people probably disagree with him. But it's just the right sort of inflammatory comments that garners attention and get up votes too.

> I bet you if there were down votes allowed on HN, this post would be about dead even, because tons of people probably disagree with him.

Downvotes are allowed on HN, you have to have a certain amount of "points" to be able to downvote.

Ahh, that might be nice to get to someday.

Comments do get downvoted on HN.

The question is, what kind of HN participant upvotes a comment like that? Who is deciding that that was a comment worth promoting, and why?

I'm sure a few people agree with what he said, because people tend to get swayed by forceful statements (eg. this is how Fox gets its viewership).

When people upvote objectively bad comments, we get evidence that their votes should be weighted down.

clearly, there is no fair, well-defined measurement for 'bad comment', except for the number of upvotes and downvotes. if now votes themselves were voted, and in turn those were recursively voted; we would end up in a ridiculous web site where diversity does not prevail and majority suppresses minority.

I am done pretending that the diversity you're alluding to is valuable. It's not; it's toxic and stupid. Let this "minority" go crud up some other forum.

While I think there are objectively bad comments, the attitude you're taking towards them may be a little unfair. People may have some opinions that are objectively wrong that can be repaired through allowing their comments to be seen and having us tell them why they're wrong.

I don't care what you think is fair. People who write or promote indefensibly stupid comments could be penalized, and doing so would probably make the site better. Paul Graham should try that (or try doing it more).

Well, you come up with a way to identify "indefensibly stupid" comments, and then I'll get behind it.

Let's start with comments that start with "XXX is a jerk and YYY is a talentless shill".

Yea, that's totally fair. Unless we're talking about Rush Limbaugh or Justin Bieber.

This made me laugh!

"yes, your last few comments and aggressive attitude do not seem to be bright from any angle. you are unfortunately unable to discuss reasonably. Your karma makes me afraid of HN in general; you must be penalized really, maybe get a karma cut by a factor of 100.", how does that make you feel? My point is that, attacks on comments and commentors are ad hominem, and wont work.

PS: i didnt upvote this article and didnt find it any good. As regular HNer, I am just alarmed by opinions to walk into "fascism".

The question is, what kind of HN participant upvotes a comment like that?

After upvoting your comment, I will answer your question. It occurs to me, because of, um, examples I have seen, that sometimes a person who has no personal knowledge of what the underlying facts are (that is, whether TechCrunch is a good citizen of the Valley or a bad citizen shot through with conflicts of interest) may upvote a comment that appears to differ from the HN consensus just to bring that dissenting view to prominence in the discussion, the better to encourage people who know facts about the matter (pro or con) to speak to those facts. In any one thread, I have at most one upvote (or downvote) for each comment, so I'm never completely sure if I'm part of the thread consensus or part of a mistaken group of outliers if I vote in a thread where I don't post. In many threads, I plainly don't know enough to vote either up or down on disputed factual matters (and thus don't vote), but I try to read in lurk mode and learn something. Maybe some people who upvoted the offensive comment in this thread, whoever they were, were "upvoting for disagreement," just as some people submit articles for disagreement, Even though the consensus here is that submitting a story endorses a story, and upvoting a comment implies agreement with the comment, there are definitely some participants here who submit or who upvote to provoke critical comment from other participants.

OT but maybe not really:

> Rational discourse goes out the window at that point, because they're convinced they're right and it's impossible that other view points may be correct. It's part of the reason most of the world is still religious.

So you think that if people were only more open to rational discussion then fewer of them will stay religious? I think you are discounting the vital role irrationality plays in our lives and playing up the importance of rationality. I think religion offers people something that is beyond or external to rationality -- not something that opposes it. Same goes for "religious arguments" about editors. Instead of belittling such sentiments, you might want to find out why they're so prevalent and whether they are indeed harmful. I suggest you read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. These books have awarded me a lot of insight on the subject.

Actually have read Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. I'll look into the other book that you recommended too. And personally, I have nothing against people being religious and wasn't belittling that sentiment. I merely think that many people are indoctrinated into a religion at an early age, and "know" that they are right, and use various ways to rationalize the belief their parents instilled in them, instead of exploring their beliefs on their and coming to their own conclusions.

Why aren't you quietly penalizing people who upvote them? They're damaging the site.

Here is a better question: why aren't you quietly penalizing people who submit the stories that generate these comments?

Well. while I absolutely find these comments to be unhelpful, it's definitely not a good idea to censor comments or explicitly ban them. I'd like to think that we can filter out these comments by the community downvoting them rather than PG doing it himself. It should be a democratic process.

HN is not a democracy, and it's not an open forum (whatever that means). It never was. If censoriousness drives users away... well, maybe that is itself a solution to a problem.

Features that make HN disproportionately less attractive to the kinds of users who vote up comments like the one upthread sound like a good idea.

While what you say is true, how many posts have you seen along the lines of "why was foo hellbanned" or "why was this post killed?" I think people would be upset if the response was because I think that they are detracting from the site.

I don't like the way hellbanning works here, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that crap like the TC/Mailbox Conspiracy comes from a minority we should protect, nor do I think hellban administration is a problem that needs to be fixed first.

We may try that one day. We've been marking such comments for a while in case we do.

Maybe generalize some of these posts to the point where you can't google ypur way back to the original author, then add them to a " wall of shame"? (I sometimes find this tempting personally.)

Examples are often a geeat way to learn.

Unfortunately, this comment (not the content of it and the entire situation) represents the state of entrepreneurship in SV :( As some older people said: if you live in a sea full of shit you are going to covered by shit.

Same with the original post really.

No information? There are people around this world and on this site who haven personal experience dealing with Mr. Arrington and/or have followed his antics for years. He's stirred up a bunch of unecessary drama, some much like has been brought against him. Remember his backroom VC deals series? Or accusing Leo Laporte of giving the Pre a positive report as a favour? That's real karma. I assume that some of the people who have upvoted my comment have, like myself, determined him to be someone I refuse to be bothered with. Certainly not bothered enough to feel sorry for him when accused of impropriety. He was a pretty good tech blogger who used his influence and money to become a VC. I see no reason to respect his work in the latter, especially when it can be tied to a possible conflict of interest.

Understand the context of my comment: that we should be forbidden from "insulting" these people or companies. By suggesting there is some conflict of interest between their investment fund and companies that they cover? I whole-heartedly disagree with that. I think the way this is heading, with tech influencers, journalists and VC's intermingling, is bad. I guess that isn't as easy to agree with when you are a tech influencer, journalist or VC, or rely on one of these people. Luckily, I'm not and don't.

As far as MG, information on his talents needs be nothing more than a perusal of his Techcrunch work. Judge for yourself. If this is the baseline for "good" tech writing, then the business is in a world of hurt. Writing over and over about the same few companies with shoddy analysis doesn't cut it for me. And if you read the comments that follow nearly every one of his old Techcrunch articles, you'd see I'm not alone, by any means. I guess not being able to say he sucks goes hand-in-hand with giving everyone a trophy at sporting events.

The low of the state of the forums will be when we aren't allowed to speak our minds because we're edited out by the tech powers-that-be-- the Arringtons, the Sarah Lacey's-- and all the sites are not real journalism, but VC mouthpieces. That's where the "echo-chamber" meme comes from. Do you think that's a good end game? That's what we're talking about here.

> It's also kind of upsetting that this post is at the top of HN and getting a kind of froth-at-the-mouth reaction that it is.

It should be upsetting, because after enough posts like this, hopefully something will be done. When it comes to ethics -- be it in politics, corporations or journalism -- behavior must not only be clean and honest, it must also be seen as clean and honest. Sometimes the people involved know that they have acted completely ethically, but they don't see how the public may perceive the situation to be different. And since public perception can hardly be changed (and it hardly should as long as unethical behavior is not uncommon), it's the people that are in the public eye who must watch their behavior rather than assume (incorrectly) that the public grant them the benefit of the doubt. They should not only make sure to behave ethically, but must make sure their behavior appears ethical (in fact, if they don't want this kind of reaction, they could act unethically as long as they appear clean :))

Now, in this case, the problem is TC. As long as TC's ethics seem "controversial" as you've put it, everything they do will be tainted. They could practice the apotheosis of ethical journalism, but as long as the conflicts of interests are not visibly resolved to the public's satisfaction, they're going to elicit such reactions. It might not be fair, but that's the way it is.

Because this is the "TechCrunch situation", any company that receives an investment from funds directly or indirectly associated with TC should -- if they want to avoid this possibly unfair though perfectly to be expected response -- distance itself from TC by requesting not to be covered by them. Or, it might not care about the reaction, in which case it may choose to do nothing about it. Hopefully, companies in this position will care, and if enough of them do maybe this will have an effect on TC or other tech publications. It's unhealthy for an industry that so much of its media coverage has a cloud of suspect ethics over it.

The conspiracy theories sprouting around Mailbox are an embarrassment. Not to SFBA startup culture, but to people who are skeptical of startup culture. The problems with Arrington and Techcrunch have nothing to do with how Dropbox valued Mailbox.

Look, conspiracy theories always pop up and there is nothing you can do about them. The question is, why do they pop up here on HN? I don't think there are too many conspiracy theorists among the HN crowd. Since they do pop up, is it not reasonable to ask if anyone is doing anything that might somehow encourage said theories to arise in a crowd not usually inclined to make them?

Obviously, TC coverage did not affect the valuation, and, as shown again and again, had little to do with the success of the company. I haven't seen any other theories, but this particular one has actually instigated a discussion here. It is possible that the fault lies with the HN crowd. But it is also possible that some things, and in particular tech media coverage, do not appear to be quite clean. This kind of thing opens the door to various sorts of theories even among the most reasonable of people, especially if they're not intimately familiar with the parties involved.

Lots of people on HN seem to buy into the logic you're using: that it doesn't matter if arguments are correct so long as they point in the general direction of rightness. Who cares if Techcrunch had anything to do with Mailbox? If a facially nonsensical conspiracy theory about Techcrunch's involvement with Mailbox helps shine a light on how bad Techcrunch is, it's all for the better.

That is not true. Incorrect arguments are bad. Nonsensical incorrect arguments are harmful. They make it that much easier for partisans on the other side to refute valid arguments against Techcrunch. They turn real issues into tribal conflicts so we can't discuss them for real anymore. They shine klieg lights onto one publication while others manage to profit from bad behavior without any scrutiny.

> Incorrect arguments are bad. Nonsensical incorrect arguments are harmful. They make it that much easier for partisans on the other side to refute valid arguments against Techcrunch. They turn real issues into tribal conflicts so we can't discuss them for real anymore.

I agree, but I'm not so sure the discussion about those arguments is so harmful, and their presence on HN shows that there is a real problem, namely the appearance of shadiness, one strong enough even to affect HNers.

We may disagree on tactics, but I think we might agree on one thing: TC (and tech journalism) must be fixed. Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed. :)

Their presence on HN does not show that there's a real problem, only that there's a quorum of users who will act to promote whatever stories fit their pet tribal conflicts.

For $100 million, Dropbox just got a glimpse at every current and future Mailbox user's inbox.

That's actionable data that's otherwise difficult to get without starting your own webmail service. This comes at a time when Dropbox seeks to expand the services and integration-points to provide other services - this might pay-off in the long run as more than just a tool to complement email.

Well, that could've been written better. There's clearly a conflict of interest, but on the other hand Mailbox seems like a useful application. Even great products benefit from hype.

I looked at Mailbox about a month ago and couldn't work out what it did that Gmail for Android didn't already do.

Then I looked again a few days ago after the hype about the sale, and I still can't work out what it does that I don't already have available with Gmail for Android.

About the only email addition I'm currently excited about and finding useful is Streak.

Yeah, it seems like Mailbox is pretty much a clone of GMail for Android, only for the iPhone.

1) We're not in a position to value the acquisition.

2) TechCrunch is more of a PR outlet than news source. It has an occasional news story, but the vast majority are PR pieces.

Surely Mailbox met the minimum bar for some glowing PR pieces in TC, so this controversy is misplaced.

This post basically says that the guys at Dropbox are idiots and can't disambiguate between PR-driven noise and a real business. News flash: the guys at Dropbox aren't idiots.

The notion that Techcrunch is fueling demand AND reaping rewards on the other side is false. Oh, they may try to prime the pump from time to time, but at most it simply gives visibility to a few startups. In the end, users will drive and dictate the value.

Give the Dropbox guys some credit. And, more to the point, don't give credit to some guys with nothing more than write access to a blog.

case in point: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/with-20-of-reservations-fil...

I'm not sure if I've ever read such fawning about a service going down.

I believe that this blog post is absurd, disrespectful and insults the entire Dropbox and Orchestra/Mailbox teams as well as, those at Aol/Techcrunch and Crunchfund. Dropbox did not buy Mailbox based on a couple of Techcrunch posts, and they obviously will have done their due diligence before purchasing the company.

Dropbox bought Mailbox because, it wants to be more than a storage company and they are looking at diversifying their income streams with the rise of rivals encroaching their territory as well as, ensuring that people stay with Dropbox rather than go to other rivals. Acquisitions of Audiogalaxy, Cove, Snapjoy etc highlight that this is Dropbox’s plans going forward.

More often than not, Techcrunch states a disclosure of a Crunchfund investment within the posts that they are writing and although, they may have not followed through with this properly with Mailbox – you can clearly see on the Company Bio linking to Crunchbase that Crunchfund are/were an investor too[1].

Let’s not forget Mailbox is from Orchestra[2], a company which already had hundreds of thousands of users and is a company which won Apple’s Productivity App of 2011[3].

[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra

[2] http://www.orchestra.com

[3] http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app-of-2...

>"Dropbox did not buy Mailbox based on a couple of Techcrunch posts, and they obviously will have done their due diligence before purchasing the company."

I like Dropbox. But recent history is filled with terrible acquisitions that have you wondering what the lawyers and accountants were doing:

Ebay buying Skype.

Microsoft buying Danger.

Microsoft buying aQuantive.

Anyone investing in Color.

AOL buying Time Warner.

Yahoo! buying Geocities.

and these were all huge deals I can think of off the top of my head. The number of small ones is, I'm sure, substantially larger.

The lawyers and accountants were doing overtime, those are all billable hours.

But to make the argument that something is "bad" you really have to know what management had in mind for it. If their goal was go "make it go away" then what looks like "bad" on the outside can be "good" on the inside. If their goal was to get a team to build something they didn't yet have a team that could build, it might also be "good" in a way you and I couldn't see.

>"But to make the argument that something is "bad" you really have to know what management had in mind for it."

What they hand in mind is irrelevant to me. All I care about is the outcome. Saying Microsoft bought aQuantive with the hopes to cure cancer in their mind doesn't justify a $6BB write down. It would still be bad.

According to Damodaran's corporate finance class, 60% of acquisitions fail in some for or another.

Hi everyone! I'm the writer of all those effusive Mailbox articles which supposedly drove up the valuation of Mailbox and helped it to be acquired for the benefit of the folks at CrunchFund. So maybe we should clear a few things up. The Storify version is here: http://storify.com/ryanlawler/techcrunch-pump-n-dump

But let's make a few things clear: I don't have any special relationship with Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, or anyone else who works at CrunchFund. I may see them around socially, in the same way that I see any other investors or entrepreneurs at events where those types of people hang out. But they don't pitch me startups they've invested in, and there's certainly no expectation that I, or anyone else at TechCrunch, be friendly to companies that they've put money into.

I joined Techcrunch more than six months after Arrington was booted, and well after the exodus of employees who worked for him started 'pursuing other interests.' I never worked with him, and besides exchanging pleasantries backstage at TC Disrupt, I frankly don't think he knows who I am. He certainly doesn't whisper secrets in my ear, and I couldn't care less about whether or not his little VC fund is successful.

I first reached out to Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood in August of last year, because I heard he was working on a cool solution to email overload. (I think I first heard about Mailbox from one of his tweets.) It wasn't until December that I'd gotten a chance to test it out. I think I had it for about a week before I wrote that first article, and I loved it, and still love it. In fact, I have been using it as my default email client ever since I got it.

At the time I worried that the story would be seen as hyperbolic, but I believed in the product and thought more people should know about it. I thought it was an actual useful piece of software that could make people's lives better, so yes, I wrote glowing reviews of it. But at no point did I do so because of any influence from Mike, or CrunchFund, or anyone who had an actual vested interest in seeing Mailbox succeed or profiting from it.

The thing that annoys me about pieces like this are that they vastly overstate the influence that CrunchFund or any other VC have in our coverage. Yes, they frequently clue us in to cool applications they're playing with, but there's no real exchanging of favors that happens. I write about products I like, usually pass on those that don't interest me, but if there's the case where I test something out and it doesn't pass muster, I usually say so.

One final note: The most recent article I wrote was about Uber, which is also a CrunchFund company. That one was not nearly as positive as the stuff I wrote about Mailbox. http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/see-uber-this-is-what-happe...

Someone with more experience writing browser extensions than I shouldn't have too hard a time using the CrunchBase database to automatically include a "CONFLICT OF INTEREST" warning in TechCrunch posts:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra

If you're in the "startup" business, where the real product is the business itself, this sort of operation is standard practice. It starts with having a PR company - a truly productive one. Add on some great media contacts made over the years and you're playing an A game.

To an extent all business runs like this. It actually is much more difficult to enforce the now, but imagine a world in which only those who can afford advertising have any public voice at all. As an added bonus, those who buy advertising are at least at the front of the line to get positive articles written about them. Those 2% of your customers you inevitably piss off can't drag your name through the mud because they have no truly public forum for their opinion. That's pretty close to how things were before the web.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for-iph...

http://www.macworld.com/article/2027388/review-mailbox-for-i...

http://allthingsd.com/20130221/mailbox-takes-swipe-at-tradit...

It's just not techcruch, mailbox app got rave reviews from other sites too. This post is insulting to mailbox team giving an impression somehow they are scamming.

The number of companies that TC hypes that go nowhere far outnumber those few that succeed. Those that do succeed seem like they would have done so even if TC hated them.

I strongly doubt they play much of a role in the success of a company.

I'm not sure that this can be reduced solely to a conflict of interest regarding Crunch Fund. Arrington left, and the piece (really more of a rant) never accounts for that or for any of the other possible motivations: it just asserts some sort of dubious manipulation of the system.

Frankly, I think the impetus is much more benign: TC wants trafic, and Mailbox is popular at the moment (primarily due to their brilliant if infuriating waiting list gimmick). Blogs write what will make them money.

This blog post was so obviously pointless and toxic that I flagged it, but of course flagging doesn't work on stories like this, because they collect upvotes too fast.

"Pump and Dump" claim might have some semblance of credibility if mailbox was a publicly traded stock that Arrington/siegler talked up on techcrunch, without noting they were investors, and then sold to the unwitting public who purchased said stock on the basis of a techcrunch article. Given that the sale to Dropbox was a private transaction, this is all moot.

That was hard work just to read a paragraph of text. Note to website owners/designers 5-7 words per line doesn't make it easier to read on a smartphone.

Granted, this type of journalism is shady, but this certainly doesn't meet the definition of a "pump and dump" scheme.

You should try using this definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump

I couldn't agree with the OP more.

And only yesterday there was a post about how you couldn't make any money as a writer!

Doesn't a company like Dropbox have the ability to judge for themselves whether or not a startup boosted by TC is actually worthy of buying? It's insane to think that they would drop $100M on a company based on TC promotion alone.

Who's being scammed here? I don't get his point.

dropbox investors.

Dropbox is a privately held company. I'm not going to second-guess it's investors or management. Besides, tech journalism has been this way since the beginning. When I read Zeigler or Mossberg I know I'm getting. I've always used the contrarian writings of John C. Dvorak as a balance. Does anyone really think the 750,000 people are going to keep using Mailbox because Zeigler or Arrington say they should, or even know who these two are?

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