





Since the recent article TechCrunch published, Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet”, it has gotten a lot of attention. Both from its own readers, the web community and Twitter too. TechCrunch had published confidential information about Twitter. However Evan Williams of Twitter had said otherwise that TechCrunch did not have such permission to share such documents.

There are people asking others to boycott TechCrunch while others praise TechCrunch and say Twitter is clueless on how to run their business due to the fact there has been no definite business model. Others like WebPro News questions – Who’s Right: TechCrunch or Twitter?

My own opinion is that TechCrunch should have gotten in touch with Twitter no matter what came through their inbox on what could be divulged. Twitter is entitled to keep their business model under wraps and their employee information by law is confidential. Was this a ploy of wankage by TechCrunch to get attention? Who knows, but at least Twitter came back with a response on their company blog (by the way… someone tell them to switch to WordPress please…perhaps Matt Mullenweg could?)

Biz Stone wrote:

Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared.

So, what do you think? Should TechCrunch issue a retraction, or will this be quite damaging to TC’s reputation? Was it a wankage scheme to discredit twitter as well as get more attention? Is boycotting TechCrunch a suitable action?

EDIT: Please be sure to note that I am not boycotting TechCrunch. In my personal opinion, it is ridiculous to do so as TechCrunch does have a lot of great material to read and learn and enjoy. However, as I have previously said, I do believe TechCrunch should at least issue some apology. I would think if someone got information like they did of TechCrunch like what happened with Twitter, that they would want to be informed and asked if it was okay to go ahead and publish, or to what information could be given out. Also, if a hacker gives out information in the spirit of helpfulness, this is not the case. They should have told Twitter and helped by giving tips. Perhaps they would have been hired by Twitter for helping them rather than making a scandal of it. I did not think TechCrunch was a tabloid, but I also just got tired of seeing people post about them wanting to boycott and wanted to know if it was really necessary and why? It was pointless to comment at TechCrunch because half of the comments were like walking into a forum with half the responses with no point despite there was a topic at hand.