TechCrunch Advertiser Wall of Shame

Going after advertisers is actually an effective method for protesting. The only way a lot of companies "get the message" is when they get hit in the pocketbook.

But is it the right strategy in this case?

I'd be furious if it were my company that was exposed like this. But if it were an internal leak -- as opposed to receiving stolen information -- would the anger be justified? Some publications (the Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD spring to mind) live off of leaked internal documents and tips. No one is going after their advertisers.

How should TC have handled it?

I don't think anyone should be faulting the advertisers. Some of the may not even know what's going on yet. Others may have advertising contracts in place that extend well into the future.

They're not advertising on TechCrunch to support TechCrunch. They're advertising there to support themselves and reach their target demographic. If you (their target demographic) stop going to TechCrunch, they will stop advertising there. I don't think there's any fault to be laid on those companies that advertise there.

And no, I don't run/own/have any interest in any of them although if I could afford to advertise on TC I still would (unless nobody I care to market towards is going there any more).

The hack is done. It appears that Twitter had poor security policies, or that Twitter employees weren't following them. Either way, the information is out there and the person(s) who chose to break in took the evil route.

Ev Williams got it. He's handled this situation very well. I'd invest in this company based on his response. He's appealed to the sympathy of all of us and essentially said he can live with the disclosure that TC will deliver despite it being something I'd be happy to toss my life savings at to suppress. Reality: it's out. There's no suppressing.

TC is operating as a journalistic outfit. "Unnamed Sources in the Pentagon", "An employee speaking on the condition of anonymity" and "A private investigation firm hired to break into the voicemail accounts of prominent individuals" IS journalism in the 21st century. TC, on the other hand, has been quite transparent. They stated upfront that they received a pile of (unsolicited) juicy information from a person who compromised accounts from Twitter employees.

TC could have posted the raw text of every message, removed names, been sued, gotten more publicity for having been sued, shined more light on the topic and become the place everyone pretends to hate but visits anyway because of the "nipples". Thus far, they haven't. They've given an insight into a company that folks on the outside who watch Twitter shouldn't find all that surprising ... it's just more directly stated in the terms of a business person summarizing reality.

Which brings up the next inevitable situation: At some point the entirety of what was collected will be made public. Hopefully it will be done after TC has had their last point to make.

Maybe those paying attention won't have stopped paying attention, but at this point ... they've begun to feel sympathetic about the situation and grant the benefit of the doubt to Ev and company.

I won't go so far as to say that journalism isn't journalism without these tactics, or that ignoring the back channel means just publishing press releases. There's a fine line. I think it's too early to know if TC crossed that line.

Full disclosure: I enjoy reading Arrington's posts. He calls out "Elephants in the room" when a lot of the tech media pretends the elephant is invisible. Yes, it's a business advantage that lends itself to accusations of tabloid journalism because calling out elephants irresponsibly results in calling specs of dust "elephants" and TC has been guilty of that.

According to insiders I've talked with, the whole business model of TechCrunch is to hype up every company who gives them exclusives, and to completely trash everyone who doesn't. This is because they know exclusives get the most pageviews, so their entire business model is built around extorting companies to get them.

If we want to teach TechCrunch a lesson the best way to do so isn't to ban them or boycott their advertisers; that's unrealistic. Better just to ban any news published by TC until it's also been covered by another source, so that way they no longer have the power to blackmail the entire industry.

I'm not angry because they published. I'm angry because they're talking up the fact that it's hacked info, trumpeting their legal right to act like dicks, stringing it out over umpteen million stories, comparing the situation to the Pentagon Papers, posing as a victim of all the criticism they're getting, and acting like we should be fellating them for choosing not to destroy the careers of the interviewees that innocently ended up in the files.

I've never really been on the TechCrunch sucks bandwagon before, but now, seriously: what a bunch of fucking douchebags.

I would like to see fewer submissions of TC stories, that's not really helpful as discovery, I can always go look at his web site should I choose without having to see the same titles here too. The purpose of HN is to discover new interesting hacker/technical related sites of interest that are not already obvious.

TC is becoming, if it's not already, TheMirror of tech, and Arrignton is Perez Hilton

Seems like an over-reaction. I think I'm comfortable just not reading TechCrunch any more.

(Ok, ok, I didn't read it much before either)

So when can HN finally ban TC submissions?