Response to Arrington's piece about me

Friday, October 5, 2007 by Dave Winer.

There are 3 mistakes in this short Mike Arrington piece. 

1. He quotes me as saying TechMeme sucks. I didn't say that, and I don't agree with anyone who says it does. I think the problem with TechMeme has more to do with the content than TechMeme itself.  

2. He said my piece was spam. Actually it was an essay. In his defense he did say "As far as I can tell," which leaves us guessing as to how far he went.  

3. He says I am using TinyURL to link to blogs that I don't like, which is not true. I do like Scobleizer, so he was wrong about which blogs I like and don't like, and why I used TinyUrl in that piece (I didn't want TM to see it as a response to those pieces, which didn't work, it did anyway).  

4. He says "I know Gabe sometimes edits stuff like this off of TechMeme to keep it stocked with real news." Maybe Mike right about this, so I won't count it as a mistake. After emailing with Gabe about this, I'm really unclear about what TechMeme is, how much of it is what Gabe thinks is relevant and how much is algorithmic. Anyone who thinks there's objectivity in TechMeme should be concerned about how much it reflects Mike or Gabe's opinion about what should and shouldn't be there.