Mike Butcher - mbites

You know what? It's time to declare peace in the ongoing TechCrunch UK / TechCrunch US / Le Web 3 debacle. I will be making no further comment on this blog, or anyone else's blog, about the matter. We've all, including me, said enough. It's time to disarm and go home, wherever home is. Suffice it to say that I think in a parallel universe things might have happened differently. But we have all made our beds and now we must lie in them.

I forgot to mention. I got onto BBC World's “Click” show this week, in an interview about Second Life. The video is here. (Although the brand name they put against my name is now incorrect).

Today we launch Vecosys, a new blog to track UK, Irish and, moving outwards, European web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 startups. Today also happens to be my birthday. (We still need to do some more design on it, but it's getting there)

This says it all really.

PLEASE NOTE: Before you read the below post, here is the context: It was written after a very difficult few days following the collapse of the TechCrunch UK franchise in December 2006 due to the falling out of franchisee Sam Sethi, who I was working with, and TechCrunch owner Mike Arrington. It was also a time when my wife was being treated for cancer. The wider context is this: I started my own blog about Web 2.0 and startups in 2006 (tbites.com), but later joined TechCrunch UK with Sam Sethi. Despite promising that there was advertising money to be had in this franchise I was never paid a cent by him for several months. Just as this was making future prospects difficult he fell out with Arrington over his blogging of the Le Web conference. Annoyed with Arrington's lack of backing of a UK colleague I then worked on a new TechCrunch competitor, Vecosys.com, with Sethi for 4 months while my wife was on Chemotherapy, hoping, all the while, that Sethi and I would secure financing for the idea. We didn’t. Unable to continue working with Sethi on such a precarious basis I parted ways with him to stay at home and help my wife and two children. Sethi went off and launched Blognation.com in mid-2007, a global technology startup blog for 25+ other bloggers. In December of that year he was later accused by two of his main US bloggers of not paying wages, contracts or expenses despite re-assurances that he would and that BlogNation was 'days' from securing funding. Sethi denied all of these accusations. Meanwhile, I was not involved in all that. I earnt almost nothing during this time. My wife recovered fully. By August 2007 my annoyance with Mike Arrington had dissipated and we had conversed about re-starting TechCrunch UK as a proper arm of TechCrunch, not a franchise. I duly re-launched it, and at the time of writing I am happy to say that it is going very well.

This is an open letter to Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, from me in my capacity as the former co-editor of TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It is written in light of the events surrounding Le Web 3 and the firing of my co-editor Sam Sethi.

(If you support this view, please Digg it, thanks)

Mike

Please take this as - for what it's worth - my formal resignation from TechCrunch UK & Ireland. Since I was locked out of the blog with no warning on Wednesday anyway, this is really just a formality. (I am somewhat reminded of times in the past when proprietors have locked the gates to journalists whose copy they did not approve of, but perhaps that is a too grandiose an analogy).

I am sorry it has come to this, but I think my position is untenable given what's happened.

To be clear, I think your decision to “fire” Sam was wrong, and I plan to say so on my blog with this letter. I feel that this is a case of censorship and by suggesting we remove Loïc Le Meur's “asshole” comment from TechCrunch UK you took away from him the opportunity - once his inflammatory comment was out there and immediately captured around the web - to backtrack and apologise and join the conversation about how he was going to improve Le Web 3 next year. If he had done so, the whole incident would have been dismissed and probably forgotten as a rash comment after a badly received conference. We're all grown-ups after-all.

You asked my colleague and co-editor Sam Sethi to remove the comment in what appeared to be a personal favour to Le Meur (given TechCrunch had no contractual or financial involvement in Le Web 3) and any other comments referring to Le Meur's comment.

By this stage that was going to be hard. A lot of people had now captured Le Meur's explosive comment and commented on it themselves, not just on TechCrunch UK but on their own blogs.

What were we going to do? Delete the whole web?

Knowing that Le Meur's comment was now very much “out there”, Sam's following post was designed to “put his money where his mouth was” and explain his position after being called an asshole. In that context he had to reference Le Meur's comment otherwise the post wouldn't have made any sense.

When this post appeared, Le Meur had already had a long time to retract or at least explain, and he would have been alerted about the comments about his comment via email. As one of France's biggest bloggers, he ought to know the score.

In the “/putting-my-money-where-my-mouth-is” post Sam was also 'stepping up to the plate' and saying if the Web community deems a TCUK event as bad then 'call us out on it', by all means, just as Le Web 3 had been criticised. As Bomega.com said of this mixing of Le Meur's comment and the announcement of a TCUK event, “It is less than elegant but I wouldn’t say it is enough to fire someone.”

But that post was removed by you.

And readers denied the opportunity to comment.

However, here is the Google cache of the, now deleted, post.

In this, Sam also encouraged Le Meur to enter the debate about Le Web 3 by posting on his own blog. Sam wrote that if - after being called an asshole - Loic could also step up to the plate and argue why the event was good, and convince the annoyed attendees and the blogger community, he would apologise for his, pretty mild, criticism.

“But equally”, Sam wrote, “if you feel that you may have got it wrong, even slightly, then I guess you have the opportunity to do the same on your own blog and to explain why the agenda was hijacked by French politicians?”

You say in Crunchnotes that in this post Sam ignored Le Meur's apology to Sam over email. But while the post did have some irony and gentle ribbing of Le Meur, Sam did say: “I have no doubt that Loic and his team worked really hard and I congratulate them for their superb organisation, speaker roster, sponsors and attendee list”. He also said “I fully understand that Loic must have felt totally pissed off with my post but all I said was what many people spoke to me about in the corridors at the event.” This, to me, does not sound like Sam was ignoring Le Meur's apology to him.

However, it's also emerged that (and this is something I was going to write up on TCUK&I, but now can't) that Le Meur fully engineered the “surprise” appearance of Nicolas Sarkozy, French presidential candidate, thus hijacking his own conference for what appears to be political ends. On that revelation alone, Le Meur should be wary of leveling insults at others.

As regards the TechCrunch UK events. I understand you are a busy man, but the ideas about events we have promoted on TCUK for weeks now should not have come as a surprise to you. This was an attempt to build the business here not just as a franchise in the UK but it also would have benefited the TechCrunch US brand, obviously. Sam wasn't doing it to “futher his own business interests” [sic.] as you say in CrunchNotes. You own the brand. We don't.

Again, on Crunchnotes you say our event plans “were not specifically approved.” Well, a) this was supposed to be a franchise operation, not two employees with you as line manager and b) there are a lot of things we have done to make TCUK successful and until now you didn't seem to object to other public announcements about events (or even communicate at all about them, I might add. We thought you trusted us to get on with the job, and we did, but our email inbox from you about anything we were doing is pretty bare).

I also disagree with you in your view that it is unethical to criticise a competitor event, when it has already been trashed far more roundly by others. I would say it is far more unethical to ignore the sentiment of one's readers - who's views are plain to see - and whitewash one's editorial coverage, than massage it into a limp, inaccurate article for the sake of a favour. In this case a favour to a conference organiser.

Sam's last and final post (again, captured by bloggers) was just an attempt to say he was leaving, given that he had been summarily dismissed by you (can you dismiss a franchisee?) with wafer-thin due process. After such an immediate firing, I think you owed him that last opportunity.

But you removed that post as well.

This made the whole thing even more interesting to people with RSS readers, long memories and blogs. This is Blogging 101, surely?

Now, there are a couple of very interesting themes here, which I won't level at your door, but would make great articles. The first is the gradual emergence of a kind of 'cigar-chomping, controlling proprietor' behaviour amongst some of the most successful blogs. I'm thinking “Citizien Kane 2.0” here. The second is the “Read/Write... and Delete Web” where blogging and user generated content is coming under attack from those who want to control or lock down the conversation. Now that I find myself free, I may well pitch them to a newspaper or magazine. Or just blog them.

Anyway, in closing let me say thanks for letting Sam and I attempt to build TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It's become clear there was a space for this kind of coverage in the UK. I worked hard to achieve this success, with Sam. I was even still posting at 2am on Tuesday night prior to my wife going into hospital for cancer treatment, a fact which has prevented me from responding more fully until now.

You will be interested to know that the traffic to TechCrunch UK & Ireland has gone up about five times over the last few days - though I guess you would consider this to be for the wrong reasons. As someone who has been in the media business for a while, I would say an editor who has increased circulation by that much - without causing world war three or faking the story - is usually worth keeping, not firing. (Here are the Technorati stats).

Lastly, let me just say that I do not wish to make this personal.

I just beg to differ with you, that's all.

Regards

Mike Butcher
(Former) Co-Editor
TechCrunch UK & Ireland
British Cell: (+44) 77 2029 1095
Skype: mikegbutcher
Blog: http://mbites.com

I wish I'd gone on this.

Here are two fascinating posts from VCs:

“The fact is that watching video on the Internet is superior in many ways to traditional television, even with a Tivo. You can’t engage with TV delivered via a set top box. How do you email a TV show to a friend with a set top box? How to you comment on it? How do you favorite it? How do you subscribe to it? How do you embed it on your myspace page, blog, etc?”

“Set top boxes - no need for those in the future. PCs will be connected direct to TVs.... The notion of ‘Channels’ disappears... Timeshifting appliances - VCRs, DVDs, PVRs - these relics of the channel model will also go... As broadband networks improve satellite will be priced out of the market... Payment models - ... The content part will, if I am right, splinter into lots of different pieces... Getting advertising to work in this world will be challenging”

I wrote an article for The New Statesman on the business and economics of the video games industry, and one on Alternate Reality Gaming. It's in this week's edition, but there is also a free download PDF of the supplement the articles appeared in here. It was a huge pleasure to be commissioned by former NS Web guru Kathryn Corrick and to appear alongside some other writers whose work I greatly respect, including Bill Thompson, Becky Hogge and Dave Green.

I have a new gig editing TechCrunch UK. Fairly soon I'll be outlining what I plan to do with this blog next and some other ideas, assuming it's of any interest to anyone, which I doubt!

I'm writing an article for a magazine (The New Statesman), provisionally titled “What have videogames ever done for us? A look at the economics of videogames in the UK”. I'm looking at the variety of jobs, how old the industry is here, who's involved, what research is being done here (both in terms of R&D and possibly academically), investment, numbers of companies, exports, and what they are doing to make money. Plus, possibly the things the government has done, should do. etc. And is it possible to include online games in any of the above? If you have any thoughts, contacts or opinions on the above, email mike at mbites dot com (thanks).

For my money, Gary Hayes offers an excellent explanation and graphic. Key quote: "We are heading towards a rich media personal hub that points to and houses all of our ’shareable’ content. But the current 2D web, mostly linear to linear linking, is about to be enhanced by virtual environments in which we meet as avatars, interact as 3D moving objects that takes sharing, collaboration and communication to the next, predictable level."

I heartily recommend this Orwellian analysis of what is going on in the world - and where it all started - by the author Martin Amis: “The age of horrorism: On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, one of Britain's most celebrated and original writers analyses - and abhors - the rise of extreme Islamism. In a penetrating and wide-ranging essay he offers a trenchant critique of the grotesque creed and questions the West's faltering response to this eruption of evil.”

Interesting: “While some researchers focus on alarming fertility rates in poor countries, which grew by 16.3 percent from 1995 to 2005, the US population grew by 10.6 percent in that period, or 29 million people, the report noted.

Azeem has an interesting post about how Digg has now overtaken Cnet.

I'm organising an event for NMK, called My So-Called Second Life. It's an afternoon seminar on the opportunities for creative firms and investment in the new world of MMORPGs (massively mulltiplayer online role playing games).

So, a little more on my trip here. I got here Sunday, contending with the now familiar terror scare , to find Tokyo sweltering in heat and humidity. Luckily the evening was bearable enough to venture out for a meal in a down-home local place.

How can you be dynamic and conservative at the same time? Tokyo seems to pull off both, at least from the outside. First impressions are of a hustling, bustling city at the forefront of modernity.

Remind me never to go to Heathrow when there is a security scare on. It took about 4 hours of chaos and queueing to get to the departure gate, then another hour to get through the takng off of shoes and the patting down of clothes.

Next week I'm off to Tokyo, where I'll be dunking my head into all things mobile, electronic and (I daresay) visiting the famed Akihabara area, famed for it's geeky fascination with technology.

One thing that struck me while I was in Los Angles last week was that the people I met kept saying the same thing: media, entertainment and technology are converging (yes, THAT word) on Los Angeles. The simple fact that the biggest music and Hollywood players are there, and the act that it is an hour's plane ride from Silicon Valley, and an hour's drive from San Diego (where the many of the big mobile firms are) means LA is ideally placed to become the physical manifestation of “convergence”.

AlwaysOn is not your typical conference. During the two and a half days it was on, it ranged from discussions about data to user generated content to venture capital to mobile. Quite a range. This was both a strength and a weakenss, but the audience handled it all with aplomb.

We were interviewing Steve Wozniak (the original co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs, who actually built the first Apple machines) after his speech at the AlwaysOn conference. Being a Mac fan and user of old I asked him to sign my Macbook. He tried a ballpoint which didn't work. The next thing I knew he'd whipped out what appeared to be a portable laser (it was damn bright to look at) and proceeded to attempt to etch his name into the plastic. I half thought I'd end up with a huge, smouldering hole in my Mac. But after a few seconds he said, with a shrug, "No, I don't see any smoke rising," and gave up. But at least I got the photo... (P.S. I'm now in Los Angeles and will write up the conference later)

So I arrived in San Francisco on Saturday only to be met with another heat-wave to replace the one I'd left behind in London. Oh joy. At least my hotel in Palo Alto, off El Camino Real, turned out to have air conditioning that worked! The Sunday morning was cooler when I met tech writer Mark Haas, (pictured) who had been introduced to me by old friend Steve Carlson, whom Mark met in Budapest in the 1990s. It's definitely a small world. After breakfasting at the excellent Bette's Oceanview Diner Mark and I proceeded to re-enact the broad plot of Sideways, with him definitely playing Miles to my Jack (minus the philandering bit I hasten to add). We drove up into the hills near San Francisco, into the Russian River vineyard region to taste a few wines and take in the scenery. Noticeable stops included the Roshambo winery which is attempting to demystify wine with some tres moderne events like a Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament. Monday I met with Yahoo!, Guba and Mobi TV, of which more later. Tuesday is the start of AlwaysOn@Stanford, when more blogging begins in earnest...

So I'm off to San Francisco/Palo Alto to meet some contacts and attend the Always On conference at Stanford this week. After that it's on to LA to chat to a few 'digital hollywood' execs and mobile people...

First published, Future Media, June 2006: Disney launched its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game back in 2003, the success of which has inspired the company to devise similar propositions around Lost and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Just what does the Mouse see in the MMORPG? Mike Butcher reports.

Published in New Media Age 15.06.06: Gustav Söderström is sitting in a hotel bar in Stockholm looking at the profile of a 23-year-old woman. This isn't some seedy chatroom on his laptop, though. He's taking part in a social experience entirely on his mobile phone, updating live as he talks and allowing him to instant message his friends and contacts, writes Mike Butcher

Söderström is a founder of Kenet Works, a mobile application developer in Sweden that has come up with an impressive Java-based application which works alongside a MySpace-style community in Sweden called Playahead.

Playahead is one of a number of online social networking sites in Scandinavia, many of which pre-date MySpace, the noted US community that has become a byword for online networking. Playahead has been a hit among the 18-24-year-old demographic, reaching over 1m members.

Part of the success of these online communities has been down to their use of mobile social software, dubbed 'MoSoSo'. The mobile application for Playahead's community lets you to do almost everything you can on a PC. It's even 'presence aware', letting your friends see if you're online.

The capability of the service is now allowing for content creation by members. "A more general trend right now is user-created content sites, where users upload photos and videos of themselves," says Söderström. He thinks user-generated content on mobile has a lot of potential.

Closed community

It's this desire among the young to network, chat and create content that has seen sites like MySpace grab headlines in the last year. The most popular of the social networking sites in the US, MySpace has over 67m members, with about 250,000 joining every day. According to ComScore Media Metrix, it accounts for 12% of US online advertising.

In February, MySpace announced a deal with US MVNO start-up Helio to offer rich mobile access to the MySpace community from Helio phones, including mobile blogging. Now MySpace, Bebo and Faceparty are all planning mobile services in the UK (NMA 01.06.06).

Alfie Denan, co-founder of Moblog UK, says, "There's real authenticity and intimacy in this." Moblog works with bands like The Automatic to allow them to moblog photos of their touring exploits as well as fans to join in, creating buzz.

But creating a branding effect on the mobile screen is a new world. Even Denan admits it's hard to create community feeling on mobile.

One of the few case studies in marketing to mobile communities has been Absolut Vodka's partnership with Dodgeball.com, which uses SMS and MMS messaging to allow users to connect with friends at nightspots in US cities. In the summer of 2004, Absolut sent opted-in subscribers a message asking them to send in their location to get information about the closest place where they could enjoy outdoor drinks.

Dodgeball was bought by Google in May 2005, but the marketing model it pioneered is still very much in its infancy. Location-based services have been largely unsuccessful for mobile operators, but it's location-relevant advertising that's making the mobile industry and marketers sit up and take notice. At this year's CTIA conference, the buzz was about the $20 to $50 (£11 to £27) CPM being touted for mobile advertising.

This is also the view of Justin Davies, founder of Ninety Ten, a London-based mobile consultancy that has launched BuddyPing. Text your location to BuddyPing and it will text you back with the location of your friends (if they're BuddyPing members), what they're doing and events in the vicinity. It also has a Java client that runs on most phones and allows members to instant message each other. So far it has 3,000 users.

"The business model for BuddyPing is to provide brand affinity," says Davies. "We can use location information to pick up an ad or sponsor message that's relevant to a person there and then." This could include offering discounts to declared gadget fans close to an electronics shop.

But to be successful, mobile location-based advertising requires a critical mass of users, something which, Davies says, can't be achieved without the draw of keeping in touch with relevant local events and people.

Andrew Scott, founder and CEO of Playtxt, agrees. "Mobile marketing is about to enter its maturing period. We're on the cusp of major brands embracing mobile," he says. At three years old, Playtxt is one of the UK's oldest mobile communities. It plans to relaunch in July with targeted opt-in location-based advertising.

"Brands are only interested it you can get a critical mass of users. So our model is like Google AdWords but linked to location," says Scott.

While social networking based on location is the idea behind BuddyPing and Playtxt, gaming perhaps holds the most potential for marketing.

Last year Future Platforms built a mobile Java-based Sudoku game for Puzzler Media that allowed users to register their scores in a league. "We thought we'd get maybe 5% of people reporting their score," says founder Tom Hume. In fact, a massive 40% of players entered their scores. "There's a latent demand for community among people doing mobile gaming already," he adds.

Congesting charges

One thing remains in the way of real mobile social communities developing, however: data charges. Fear of being hit by unknown bills for using WAP sites or Java portals is clearly holding back the development of communities.

One way around this would be for brands to pick up the costs on behalf of customers. Indeed, Masterfoods sweets brand Skittles is already sponsoring a BuddyPing sub-site (buddyping.com/ skittles), offering users a free BuddyPing account under the 'Skittles Big Summer' promotion.

Brand sponsorship of mobile communities isn't going to be a golden bullet, however, says Helen Keegan, a mobile marketer who runs BeepMarketing. "It's not about the channel, it's about the community and user experience," she says. "It will probably be a blend of mobile, Web and offline events designed to build these communities that will be key to their success."

For now, mobile communities look likely to remain stymied by data charges and even the simple step of getting users to use a service. But it remains an area where brands could benefit by meeting consumers literally where they stand.

Published in New Media Age 15.06.06

Who needs courses when you can just read WikiNews. (Damn - and all those early years of slogging it through boring local council meetings, court cases and shitty magazines was for nothing).

This Saturday Christian Aid are asking people to drum for Trade Justice to remind people of the promises made by the G8 last July and to form a petition to the UK government. There will be drumming sessions organised all over the country, drumming at 12 noon. For more information on the whole event look at www.pressureworks.org (one of the Christian Aid websites). Do it - it will be fun and useful at the same time.

Helen Beckett, Media Matching Manager with www.mediatrust.org is matching charities with people who can share their new media expertise and advice (pro bono). Get in touch with her on helenb[at]mediatrust.org.

Labours former Chief Spinmiester is blogging about the World cup on Labour's web site. Now I've seen everything.

But get a load of these horrendours URLs:

http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/index.php?id=97&tx_
ttnews[tt_news]=171&tx_ttnews[year]=2006&tx_ttnews
[month]=06&tx_ttnews[day]=08&cHash=64db4ea2b0

Call that a permalink? Not very Web 2.0 Alistair...