Comments on: Michael Arrington Uses Journalism as Excuse to Rid Himself of Shitty Investments

By: liam scobbie

liam scobbie — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:33:36 +0000

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/05/grok-this-forget-the-business-books-go-sci-fi-to-stoke-your-imagination/

By: What the Fuck is Andrew Keen Doing on Twitter? : The Drama 2.0 Show

What the Fuck is Andrew Keen Doing on Twitter? : The Drama 2.0 Show — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:02:45 +0000

[...] producing it. Given that, Keen might just deserve the award for Biggest Bullshitter. You hear that, Mikey? You’re off the hook, [...]

By: Drama 2.0

Drama 2.0 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:51:40 +0000

liam scobbie: you’re joking right?

There’s no money in his investments. Obviously, he lost everything he put into edgeio and Omnidrive. I can’t imagine who would buy his Seesmic shares for much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a little bit on his Dogster shares, although it’s hard to see much of a valuation for that company either.

If he invested cash, those investments were likely tiny (five figures). If he received shares for services, that probably turns out to be a shit deal when you consider what he had to pay in taxes for them.

The bottom line is that Arrington claiming that concern over his credibility is leading him to divest himself of these shitty investments is as meaningful as me telling you, “I’m selling 5 shares of Citigroup so that you’ll find my posts on the financial markets credible.”

At $2.15/share, we’re talking less than $15. Net-net, that’s probably more than Arrington is walking away with.

By: liam scobbie

liam scobbie — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:11:37 +0000

I agree with Valley Insider, he’s selling because he wants the cash. He’s not quite the rogue you make him out to be though. He’s never run ads against content he gets for free i.e comments. He pays his staff old media wages. It’s not about journalism. If he wanted to be a journalist he would not have started a blog. What he loves is writing, same as you I’d guess. Blogging means having to publish several times a day. He’s smart and getting older and wants out is my guess. I hope he’s looked at writers he admires like Cohello and thought that with an agent he could become a popular author publishing once every few years, instead of once every few minutes and spend most of his time on the beach. He may even make as much money as he does from blogging since he writes like a popular dramatist not a news reporter. Good luck to him, surely there are far worse people on the internet to hate?

By: Valley Insider

Valley Insider — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:56:57 +0000

I meant to say he never paid a dime for the investments – he was never a seed/ vc. At best he is getting shares for using his blog to create buzz and usage. In the investment biz it is called pump and dump and it is illegal. The whole thing is a scam.

By: bgates

bgates — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:06:19 +0000

What Bart said…lol

“…and the only news worth writing about is a new URL shortening service” — don’t forget the awesomeness of their post yesterday about YouTube getting a progress bar for uploads. Breaking news!

I love it. TC is too amusing to delete from my reader.

By: Valley Insider

Valley Insider — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:13:41 +0000

It is simpler than that. He is broke. He never paid a dime. It was a barter. The whole site is a scam. He is getting a higher CPM than it costs. With ad rates dropping – he is shitting.

By: jorge

jorge — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:41:58 +0000

envy. pure envy to techcrunch’s success. your blog sucks by the way.

By: Bart

Bart — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:16:17 +0000

the fucking minute i read his post, i thought the exact same thing – then i see later on your link to his post. we are on the same page

he did this as an excuse to get out of these companies before they fail