Citing threats, TechCrunch founder taking a break

Citing threats, TechCrunch founder taking a break

nz.news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (AFP) - TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced Wednesday he is taking a break from writing for his influential technology blog after being spat on at a conference and getting death threats.

Writing on techcrunch.com, Arrington, 38, said an unidentified man "walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face" on Tuesday at the Digital, Life, Design conference he was attending in Munich, Germany.

"In the past I've been grabbed, pulled, shoved and otherwise abused at events, but never spat on," Arrington said. "I think this is where I'm going to draw a line.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is interesting. Techcrunch is just a simple technology blog which, to my knowledge, really hasn't produced any reason to spit on the founder. I wonder if this has to do with his announcements of layoffs/financial strife, his exposing various privacy holes inate to the computer age, or something else... something he was going to write about but has change his mind on?

Definitely a sign of the times where an independant blogger is hated and gets death threats for simply posting his opinions online.

nz.news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Interesting...

The blog does have its detractors...

From Wilkepedia:

As a popular website, TechCrunch faces a high degree of public scrutiny, and TechCrunch employees have been periodically accused of various conflicts of interest. However, no claims of conflict of interest against TechCrunch have ever been proven.[7][8][9] Original MobileCrunch editor Oliver Starr's duties are now handled by several authors. Starr was apparently fired by Arrington, allegedly for a conflict of interest arising from Starr's serving as Senior Mobile Analyst for "The Guidewire Group." Starr claims that the dispute arose instead from a payment dispute with Arrington over payments allegedly due Starr.

Source

But one has to wonder why such visceral animosity???

You may be onto something here....especially if someone can find out what he was working on..

edit to add source link

[edit on 28-1-2009 by RolandBrichter]

How much ya' wanna' bet

PUBLICITY STUNT