David Emery Online

Behind Closed Doors

13 December 2006

We interrupt your scheduled 5th best album of the year to bring you news from the blogosphere…

Something’s going down.

Sam Sethi has been fired from TechCrunch UK

Apparently for plugging TechCrunch UK events whilst slagging off Les Web 3 – which by all accounts sucked – removing the conversation from a conference ostensibly about blogging simply to promote a political agenda is just wrong. No matter how hard you say otherwise.

I’ve had a deep set feeling for quite a while now that while a lot of people at the top of the tech hierarchy try and claim that they are “different” from the old-school big business attitude that requires you to screw people over they really aren’t; it’s all just spin and marketing. This all reeks to me of friends pulling favours.

To top it off, it appears that Sam’s TypePad account has been deleted – Loic Le Muir (the guy behind Les Web, and who kick started this by calling Sam an asshole in the TechCrunch UK comments) works for Six Apart, the people behind TypePad.

I really hope that it’s just a badly timed bug, and that his account hasn’t been barred – if not, this kind of stuff really degrades the whole industry.

How can you trust a company that would pull that kind of stunt?

I really hope that people really start coming clean over what’s going on – Michael Arrington has posted his reasoning behind the firing but it just doesn’t add up to me. It sounds like a little bit of miscommunication at best. And Loic and Six Apart really need to start talking soon, and clear up what the hell is going on.

This whole affair – if it turns out to have played out like it appears – makes me feel embarrassed to be a blogger, and embarrassed to be in the Technology buisness.