Written on December 19, 2007 – 11:34 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
After the whole Blognation story last week I was sort of expecting another thing to happen. Another post by Sam (’Scam’) Sethi or a new captain taking over or a lawsuit or, well, something. Anything!
But it seems that Blognation is now officially, seriously, definitively and permanently over. Blognation’s hosting company, Howard Baines, has updated the landing page for Blognation. And they seem to have a sense of humor about the whole thing too. The title of the page is now ‘one nation, no voices‘ where it used to be ‘one nation, many voices‘ and the new frontpage displays the following message:
Blognation.com: Will the last one out please turn off the light.
It is clear that for many people this story is far from over and I’m sure we will all remember and talk about it for years to come but at least Blognation, the website, has now ceased to exist.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on December 14, 2007 – 4:14 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
You could feel it in the air, and yes today this bubble burst.
Sam Sethi, former chief editor of Techcrunch UK, decided to close down Blognation, exactly one year after Michael Arrington (Editor in Chief TechCrunch) fired him.
First of all I have to say that I know both guys pretty well and that I’ve always had fun catching up with both.
“Sam, there is just no justification for you or this post, you’re just an asshole”
Loic Lemeur
So a very short recap of what happened (as far as I know).
Sam Sethi started TechCrunch UK in 2006 together with Mike Butcher, covering UK based and European startups.
TechCrunch was partner of LeWeb3 conference in Paris and Sam Sethi posted a blog about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Loic LeMeur (initiator of LeWeb3) wasn’t amused with this post and commented “Sam, there is just no justification for you or this post, you’re just an asshole”. The whole blogosphere jumped on it instantly. Then Arrington requested to delete the comment and Sethi refused. In the end he got fired, apparently because of a lot of other things that have happened.
Afterwards Sam Sethi started Blognation and hired a team of journalists to write for Blognation. He claimed to have had funding, but in the end he didn’t have any cash to pay his journalists.
Well both parties have written about it, decide for yourself.
Arringtons story is here: The Fact and Fiction of Sam Sethi
Sam Sethi’s story is here: Here’s to You Mr(s) Arrington, Goodbye and Good Luck Startups
Blogging and the web are about openness and transparency, not about lies, scams and taking other people down. I think this ’storm’ will pass by and that everybody will forget about Blognation and this whole mud throwing thing. We’ll get back to normal life and write about all the cool things going on in the tech scene.
Update: Please take a look at the comment of Oliver Starr, who was one of the many victims of Sethi.
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