Pay For Play: Blog Investing as "Hush Money"

Tmrrw I’ll write about my favorite ice cream flavor & then spend three days dealing with press attacks about how unethical I am.

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) February 14, 2012

If you love Internet drama — and why wouldn’t you? It’s so spiritually refreshing and intellectually fulfilling! — don’t miss the current “Silicon Valley tech reporter/investor” throw-down happening at multiple showcases near you. Here’s a pretty good entry point: “This started when Nick Bilton of the New York Times posted an item criticizing Path, which had been caught up in a firestorm when it emerged that Path had been uploading entire address books from people’s iPhones. Bilton made the legitimate point that it’s now become a routine for Valley companies to do something sleazy, get caught, then quickly apologize and get hailed as heroes by the Valley for the quality of their apology…. Anyway — Path comes under fire, and guess who rides to the rescue? Michael Arrington, who runs CrunchFund, an investor in Path, launches a blistering critique of Bilton himself.” Then it gets ugly: “another VC recently told me his firm recently had passed on opportunities to invest in some new tech blogs that were proposing a business model he described as ‘hush money.’” If you really want to get into it you can read Arrington’s response or MG Siegler’s (basically: “His words reek of jealousy. Of disillusionment. He’s angry. He doesn’t get it.”) or go visit a bunch of peoples’ Twitters, all of whom are very agitated! The narcissism is also amazing.