Intrigue and confusion over at TechCrunch UK following what appears to be a dispute between Sam Sethi and TechCrunch head honcho Michael Arrington, with Sethi losing out and moving on.
In his (now removed) final post Sethi wrote:
"Following yesterday’s post about Le Web and Loic’s retort. It seems Mike Arrington has disagreed with my post and opinion believing my actions to be vindictive towards Loic. What was said between Mike and I will remain confidential but suffice to say I can no longer remain with TechCrunch UK & Ireland.
"It is a very sad after all the work that has gone into TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I wish all of the UK and Irish entrepreneurs well. I will be personally blogging back at www.vecosys.com and looking for something new to keep me busy. Bye."
Sethi had posted a roundup of Le Web 3, which many in the blogosphere have been complaining about today after the Paris-based event – previously called Les Blogs – morphed into a kind of political sideshow, with appearances from Shimon Peres, Francois Bayrou and Niklas Sarkozy.
Some attendees, who had shelled out EU600 to attend Le Web 3, were suitably miffed at being lectured about the internet by politicians who don’t understand the internet.
Nevertheless, TechCrunch France was one of the sponsors of the event and organiser Loic Le Meur clearly felt aggrieved, judging by a comment left for Sethi on TechCrunch UK: “There is no word to qualify you and this post. You are just an asshole.”
We’ve emailed Michael Arrington for some clarification but there’s no word as yet…
Update: Mike Butcher has posted an open letter that explains his position.
Reader comments (2)
Global Managing Director at We Are Social
12:31AM on 14th December 2006
Michael has posted his side of the story here:
http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=322
the comments are worth reading...
CEO at Segala
12:29AM on 11th January 2007
I attended the event, spent a great deal of time with some of the bloggers there, including Sam who I travelled with. I was also on a Skype call with Sam at the time emails started to come in from Mike Arrington during his interview with Bill Gates. So, I was lucky (or unlucky) to be the first to break the news about Sam being fired on the Web2Ireland site - Mike did post a comment on it somewhere.
http://www.web2ireland.org/index.php?paged=2
I also debated with Mike on his own patch at http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=322 and then at http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=327 - the guy wouldn't shut up.
There's no point in reiterating what I've said before - mostly because it's all over. I thought you might appreciate some pointers to some of the main points which were referenced on lots of other blogs.
Paul
http://segala.com/blog
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