TechCrunch Is Broken. Who Will Fix It?
TechCrunch is by all means a pleasant and interesting read. They have the news, they have the contacts, they are right-on, righteous and they have plenty of attitude.
Founder and editor Michael Arrington is regarded by Forbes Magazine as the second most important “Web Celeb” who can “make or break” any start up and whose wrath is feared by internet scamsters and corporate cut-throats alike.
Arringtons aura and energy has very much made TechCrunch what it is, but he can also count on a team of enthusiastic contributors who make every effort to emulate the great man and support his cause.
So far, so good, but what happens should it all go wrong?
Last weekend, MG Siegler, TC staff writer, sniffed out trouble brewing with the iPhones Facebook App.
Users complained about blank profile pages and lack of updates. As any professional interweb hack would do, Siegler started his research engines: “Twitter searches, tips coming in” and even a “Facebook thread” on the matter convinced him there was some journalistic meat on what others might have dismissed as a simple temporary technology glitch.
To understand how this story unfolds, we need to consider that anything to do with iPhone Apps is of course entangled in the entire recent ideologic direction of TechCrunch. TechCrunch, led by Arrington, are very much opposed to Apple’s App Store vetting process, which in their eyes is at best arbitrary at worst unjust and stifling innovation.
Despite the enormous amount of Apps that have somehow managed to survive Apple’s alleged ‘tyranical’ and ‘draconian’ decisions, and despite the amount of competition and innovation that has revived what was a rather stale tepid and wrapped up market until Apple entered it, TechCrunch is convinced that only developer unrest, defections and creative stagnation can come from a business modell that keeps control of it’s store front.
This ideological approach to the App Store and its policies unfortunately leads to a somewhat distorted world view in which there exist only heros and villains, friends and foes, freedom and slavery.
So when Siegler looked at the result of his research (Tweets and a Facebook thread, no less) he was, as any good journalist, looking for the subtext. Technology breaks down all the time, but perhaps there be a moral lesson to be drawn from this incident, or perhaps he might prove that Apple was somehow responsible?
For, after all, the creator of the iPhone Facebook app was no other than Joe Hewitt. Joe Hewitt had previously been declared an ‘iPhone God’ by the mighty Michael Arrington himself, an open source celebrity, who’s development prowess somehow got swallowed by the Facebook empire, and who, despite accepting the corporate shilling, quite vehemently came out on the side of the fettered and shackled developers who reluctantly laboured in Apple’s fenced-off orchard.
Siegler noticed that Hewitt had only recently thrown down his tools in disgust, and had either voluntarily or under the corporate cosh, moved away from iPhone app development.
Siegler then put 1 and 1 together and arrived at 17 and a half.
What if the godlike Hewitt had somehow cursed the demonic App Store and and caused the Facebook hiccups as divine revenge for many a frustrated app dev, or perhaps the mere absense of Hewitts goodwill would break his apps and expose Apple to the anger of millions of iPhone users? After all, Siegler himself had declared the Facebook app as the “most useful app on the iPhone”. The case seemed clear.
The resulting story went public on the 21st of November and the flood gates of an allmighty public outcry opened. Twitter lit up with the re-tweets of a million hurting souls, echoing Sieglers solemn, despairing cry of “Facebook’s iPhone App Is Broken. Who Will Fix It?”
Alerted by Siegler’s panic stricken article and the reaction it had caused, and keen to keep TechCrunch sweet, Facebook representitives hurriedly despatched communiques, assuring all was well and a ‘team of engineers’ was dealing with the issue. But that did little to persuade Siegler that all was well and waiting might be the best policy.
In fact, it roused in him even greater despair. So in a hasty addendum he vented his doubts: “How many Facebook developers does it take to fix an app? We’ll find out, I guess. The answer should be one: Hewitt. But sadly, that’s not the case anymore.”
Yes, sadly the life giving entity that was Hewitt had been replaced by a faceless team of engineers, and what had once been whole had been smitten into many tiny pieces and nobody would ever be able to put it all together again.
In the meantime, comments appeared, confirming that it was not only the iPhone which was affected–Android and Blackberry users experienced similar problems. Facebook again tried to signal to Siegler that his take on the issue might be misguided: “this is the result of a backend Platform API issue, not the iPhone app. We are pushing a fix shortly.”
But at that point Siegler was not going to turn around, and he certainly wasn’t going to listen to the his readers nor the corporate lackeys. Despite all evidence to the contrary he insisted: “That sounds like an iPhone app problem to me”.
Eventually TechCrunch demi-god Hewitt himself felt it was time to intervene and put the story straight: “The FB API has glitches from time to time which break not just the iPhone app, but every app that builds on it, from Blackberry to Seesmic.”
Siegler still didn’t feel it was time to admit his bloggers tantrum was nothing but mindless drivel, and rather than seeing the funny side of his allmighty cock-up, he blamed his confusion squarely on the iPhone: “So I’ll guess we’ll just chalk up all the iPhone-only complaints to the fact that it’s so popular.”
Lack of research and jumping the gun had nothing to do with it…
There is a clear problem with TechCrunch: Just like any organisation that punches way above their weight they start to believe their own hype and as a result become incapable of self inspection and loose all perspective. When Arrington started out his astuteness seemed par for the course and appropriate for an ambitious rabble-rouser.
But now, with his influence and connections Arrington and his TechCrunch cronies need to make twice as sure that they don’t publish trite trash for the sake of a few million extra, short term, page impressions. They need to practice what they preach. With power comes responsibility, so they must get their stories right or put them right if they don’t.
After all, contrary and fearless publications like TechCrunch are essential for a self-regulating, free internet, but they also need sound, journalistic hard work and a smidgeon of humility.
sources:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/21/facebook-iphone-app-broken/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/23/interview-with-facebooks-joe-hewitt-iphone-god/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/
TechCrunch losing its bite? pic by nouveau
TechCrunch is by all means a pleasant and interesting technology read. They have the news, they have the contacts, they are right-on, righteous and they have plenty of attitude.
Founder and editor Michael Arrington is regarded by Forbes Magazine as the second most important “Web Celeb” who can “make or break” any start up and whose wrath is feared by internet scamsters and corporate cut-throats alike.
Arringtons aura and energy has very much made TechCrunch what it is, but he can also count on a team of enthusiastic contributors who make every effort to emulate the great man and support his cause.
So far, so good, but what happens should it all go wrong? Read the rest of this entry »
