A lot of bits have been generated regarding the recent swipe TechCrunch took at the departing Chief Architect of Twitter. The personal taunting and Tabloid aspect have ticked off a few people. Of course the article had the desired effect from the TechCrunch perspective and the page views and comments are flying.
The point I want to bring up is that this method of personal "dissing" seems to be directly influenced by the recent visit of Loren Feldman to the TechCrunch "compound". Feldman has recently caused a bit of controversy on his own by singling out Shel Israel to personally ridicule and generally try to make his life miserable. He has gone to the lengths of registering the shelisrael domain where he hosts puppet show parodies of Shels FastCompanyTv show interviewing Web personalities. While I have to admit that some of the bits made me laugh, the unrelenting and apparent meaness can get old quickly. If you look in the background of some of the interviews which were shot at the Arrington enclave, you can see Mike Arrington in the background assuming the role of grip as the puppet works his magic. At that point I had an ah ha moment but didn't know why. Now the latest controversy makes it obvious. Has TechCrunch taken a step closer to the ValleyWag approach. You be the judge. Next up a scathing animated feature starring Zuckerboig and a parody of the recent Facebook chat app.
So what is next? Loren is obviously taking a page out of the Howard Stern, start a beef, playbook. Even on this relatively tiny scale, it bumps up traffic. So how about an East Coast vs. West Coast beef or "Social Media is for Wussies" campaign led by Amanda Chapel.
Bottom line, there is not really a major point to this post, but I was hoping do my little part by fanning the flames to jack up the pageviews with a manufactured controversy and link bait headline.
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