After TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington called Robert Scoble a sellout for accepting ads on his blog in the future, Dave Winer (you might know him as one of the original bloggers and the inventor of RSS) took on the tone of a disappointed father in the comments section.
“Mike, I say this with all my heart — stop wasting your time on this bullshit,” writes Winer.
The BS he’s referring to is making a headline about Robert Scoble selling out when he should be networking with the all the bigwigs in Davos about this time, expending some effort toward creating something bigger and better than TechCrunch.
(This is why I always say sell out first, that way you never get accused of it. You can run things the way you want after you’ve made some money.)
Winer indicates how much nerve Arrington has, calling Scoble a sellout when Arrington did it long before:
“I still think you sold out way way too cheap. I think you should have been the Ben Rosen of this generation, using your unique insider’s view of the industry to see what the leaders were missing and then starting a few companies to take advantage of that. I don’t know what you’re making from TC, at best it’s probably $2 or $3 million a year. The kind of money Ben Rosen made from starting Lotus and Compaq dwarfs that by several orders of magnitute [sic]…”
In other words, “quit screwin’ around kid and get in the game.”
Likely, Arrington doesn’t see it that way and is perfectly happy where he is, but nobody likes to be lectured about his potential, especially not in front of everybody. So for what it’s worth, Mike, I say: Tell that old man where to stick it. It’s okay to do things your own way.
