Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit

by arthurk • 17 years ago

413 100 17 years ago

blog.last.fm

gstar4• 17 years ago

I'm chuffed that a respectable outfit like last.fm publishes a blog post with a title like that. About time.

Techcrunch has been on the inflection point of "mattering" to the wider public, which scares the life out of me!

j2d22• 17 years ago

It's not even grammatically correct!

"Techcrunch is full of shit" would be right.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

I can't see why you got down voted. That was my first thought when I read it. I reread it 5 or 6 times until I decided that I must be missing something.

TechCrunch = a corporation A corporation = a legal person Singular, not plural!

scott_s• 17 years ago

The author is British: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_di...

dunk0102• 17 years ago

Perhaps, you know, it might have been intentional......

dustineichler• 17 years ago

Noticed this too, but I think grammatically he used "are" in the inclusive sense that everyone at techcrunch _is_ full of sh*t. therefore, if you work their... it must be so.

omouse• 17 years ago

>Techcrunch has been on the inflection point of "mattering" to the wider public, which scares the life out of me!

Your pants must be very soiled. Did you know that the wider public reads tabloids as well? Did you know that they read gossip rags? CLEAN UP IN AISLE GSTAR!

gstar4• 17 years ago

Hey, I said life - nobody said anything about brown trousers.

Thanks for your concern though, and I'll just clean up with this copy of the Mirror.

gregparadee• 17 years ago

Last.FM FTW, seriously TechCrunch is getting worse and worse every week.

gstar4• 17 years ago

I (obviously) agree. You might see some reticence to post here though, as TC is a bit of a cabal and nobody with a public profile wants to shake the cage.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

I have a public profile, and long ago dismissed TechCrunch as one of the least intelligent blogs on the Internet. The writing is bad, the content is boring, and now we know it's not even correct.

Go away, TechCrunch.

tarmac• 17 years ago

This makes me think about that TechCrunchee getting spit on the face...

I'd now like to get the spitter's side of the story.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

I think the idea is that in order for your startup to succeed, you need TechCrunch to like it. The spitter probably got a bad review.

(Anyway, I don't think this is important. Very few people with money to spend have ever heard of TechCrunch. Their opinion mostly matters in the VC echo chamber, not in the real world.)

jm42• 17 years ago

TechCrunch is awful, but there's no excuse for the spit in the face incident. I don't give a damn what lousy, fabricated article TechCrunch might have published to precipitate that. It's disgusting and totally uncalled for.

vaksel7• 17 years ago

who knows if that really happened, or if Arrington was just linkbaiting to make money

giles_bowkett5• 17 years ago

<i>TechCrunch is awful, but there's no excuse for the spit in the face incident.</i>

that's silly. I swallowed some water but there was a fly in the water somehow, it was wriggling, so I reflexively spat and your face just happened to be there. that's just one of many great excuses for spitting in somebody's face.

more seriously, there might or might not be any excuse for it, but if you thought it was anything but a matter of time, that's unrealistic. the appropriate response is just blogging that they're full of shit, but inappropriate responses still fit in an overall system of cause and effect.

dimitry• 17 years ago

That title is nothing new. I'm just glad someone (with a big audience) is saying it publicly.

uuilly• 17 years ago

Did he mean to say "Techcruch are full of shit" instead of "Techcrunch is full of shit?" Is there an inside joke I'm missing?

lacker• 17 years ago

In British English company names act as plural nouns.

pg• 17 years ago

I usually do this, and editors always want to change it. I never realized it was an English thing.

chairface• 17 years ago

I don't think it's a joke - I just read it as a Britishism.

axod2• 17 years ago

It'll be interesting to see if TechCrunch acknowledge this, respond or apologize...

My bet is they completely ignore it.

physcab2• 17 years ago

If people didn't like Techcrunch, they wouldn't go to the site. If Techcrunch was irrelevant, they wouldn't generate massive leads for pet projects that people create.

There was an article a week or so ago about how people were complaining every time Techcrunch posted a story about some Twitter application. The author of the article wrote back in protest basically saying, "well if you don't like the articles, don't comment on them."

Techcrunch generates buzz. They're good at it. I may live in a hole, but I didn't really hear about Last.fm until Techcrunch posted that story. Last.fm got a pageview from me off of that story.

And personally, I don't really care about TC's opinion. I'm smart enough to make my own judgment. But until they report it, I have little way discovering new companies.

sgoraya• 17 years ago

I agree - Although the quality may be slipping, I still find the site useful enough to check it out daily in my news/info gathering routine in the mornings. If something interests me, I'll read the full post (which is becoming rare now days).

A while back I had sworn the site off because of link baiting headlines and the fantastically smarmy tone of some of the stories, but hey, there is still an occasion nugget or two.

giles_bowkett5• 17 years ago

If people didn't like Techcrunch, they wouldn't go to the site. If Techcrunch was irrelevant, they wouldn't generate massive leads for pet projects that people create.

these points are both true, but they don't alter the fact that Techcrunch is also full of shit.

physcab2• 17 years ago

If they are, why do people post TC articles on here every few hours?

I typically don't advise people to read articles that are full of shit.

I think people who whine about TC articles and think they are full of shit are in the minority. Their fan base seems to be growing rapidly. You can't impress everyone with your writing. And besides, TC is a blog. I think you're entitled to say whatever you want, even if its full of shit.

jonursenbach• 17 years ago

It finally happened. Techcrunch is the new Valleywag.

dunk0102• 17 years ago

True dat.

vaksel7• 17 years ago

so who is the new techcrunch?

tonystubblebine2• 17 years ago

We are. Hacker News is the top spot for getting news relevant to startups.

wheels2• 17 years ago

I vote for ReadWriteWeb. More level writing, more focused on web startups, feels a little nerdier.

josefresco• 17 years ago

And just like that, there's a whole new audience for TechCrunch that never existed.

"Thanks Last.fm for all the free PR" Sincerely, M.A.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

Except that this Last.FM post is currently the number 3 result in Google for "TechCrunch", with its title prominently displayed.

Oops.

Harkins• 17 years ago

That's just Google giving prominent placement to something they see as breaking news. It'll disappear in a week or so, then reappear somewhere much lower in a few more weeks as it's normally indexed by their crawler picking up links and rebuilding its graph.

sgrove• 17 years ago

Overall, not a bad deal for TC, I'd say. Checking on the twitter stream shows that there's a lot of RT of this headline - which will only serve to spread TC's name around. It may be bad in the long run, but they may be able to issue some muted apology, patch things up, and restore their standing. More coverage, etc.

Of course, with MA's combative personality, it may go slightly differently, but it's probably a net positive for TC. Sadly enough.

axod2• 17 years ago

Yeah I'm guessing most people on twitter already know about TC actually. Heck most of them probably first read about twitter on TC - they post enough 'twitter' stories there.

tmilewski• 17 years ago

I really want to see what Techcrunch says.

While this is terribly unprofessional, Techcruch had it coming to them.

giles_bowkett5• 17 years ago

like most people who post here you need to read Paul Graham's early work. professionalism is harmful to quality of work and especially so in startups. professionalism is an artifact of the industrial revolution and is not relevant in all fields. computer programming is to some degree post-industrial and professionalism is irrelevant and archaic for many programmers. criticizing a programmer for being unprofessional is like criticizing him or her for not being well acquainted with the phases of the moon and the effect those phases have on that programmer's crops.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

rubbish. it is easily possible to be professional and produce excellent work. it doesnt have to be stuffy and haughty that's all :)

(and yeh I read his early stuff: not a fan. At every stage in a startup you have to get to a stage where you need to show some professional gloss to prove your not just another backroom programmer - IMO it is the core reason why a lot fail, they cling slavishly to that "fun guy" image and lose corporate custom because of it ;))

@the previous poster: I wouldnt call it unprofessional per se. Empassioned perhaps :D

sorry for the OT :)

giles_bowkett5• 17 years ago

there you have it in a nutshell

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

The most disappointing thing is that the TC writer is clinging to his story. After a complete denial he is still trying to suggest there is some truth in the rumor.

Either produce the hard evidence or apologise.

chops• 17 years ago

Link?

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

Err the TC article...

"Despite my attempts to corroborate it and the subsequent detail I’ve been able to gather, I still don’t have enough information to determine whether it is absolutely true. But I still don’t have enough information to determine that it is absolutely false either."

Is his last word on the matter. Essentially he is saying they have denied it but his "rumor" may even still be true.

That smacks of a lie somewhere along the line to me (and as it is my job to find lies I suspect it is the case). :)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/did-lastfm-just-hand-ov...

pramit• 17 years ago

Techcrunch tried but couldn't become the Red Herring of web 2.0. Nowhere near.

peregrine• 17 years ago

Why does this story have such a longer Front Page Life?

Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

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