Twitter Hits Back At TechCrunch
The tech world is abuzz today with TechCrunch a reputable blog, publishing documents that were stolen from twitter by someone else and sent to TechCrunch.
Those documents contained critical information and important information about the growth and future of twitter, however the folks at TechCrunch thought otherwise and decided to make the documents public, which in turn has bought them hate from several quarters.
Twitter had been silent on the issue, but looks like TechCrunch proclaiming that twitter had allowed them to publish them the documents have led to a backlash.
Early afternoon (PST) Evan Williams (@ev) the CEO of twitter, tweeted this, questioning TechCrunch about them saying that twitter had authorized the publishing of documents.
A bit later, they took it further in a blog post titled Someone Call Security. Twitter clarified why the hack happened and also gave a befitting response back to TechCrunch.
Twitter is more than jotted-down notes from a handful of meetings. Our future will be shaped by the passion and inventiveness of everyone who uses Twitter and through the execution of our ideas. Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared. Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships.
Along with a hint that they may sue them in the future.
We are pursuing a path to address the harm caused by these actions as noted yesterday.
There is definitely a battle brewing here, it would be interesting to see what the outcome is, however a big question arises, is it ethical on part of any publications to publish stolen documents that may contain information that is critical to a company?
Shantanu
July 17th, 2009 at 12:56 am #
I am completely with twitter in this. Tech Crunch behaved like a little sissy blog here trying to get some more page views. They should really mind their own business rather than trying to get cheap publicity from this.
Reply to this comment
Pallab
July 17th, 2009 at 3:24 am #
My first reaction to TC post revealing that they have been emailed confidential docs by a hacker was – this is gonna be fun.
And it seems things are certainly gonna get hotter.
Btw, I am among those people who believe TC isnt really doing anything wrong.
It may not be upto the highest standards of ethics, but isnt all that wrong. They would have been wrong if they had revealed more sensitive material. So far they havent actually revealed anything which would really hurt the company. Just some curious and interesting stuff.
And consider how a journalist normally gets his info. Journalist generally have their own sources, who in turn has contacts with a lot of inside people. The inside people pass along the info to the source who then passes it on to the journalist.
Here the source is the hacker. He has illegal access to the docs which he passes on to the journalist.
Reply to this comment
Pallab
July 17th, 2009 at 3:27 am #
@Shantanu : Unfortunately their business is breaking news. They are actually minding their own business when they are publishing twitter’s growth estimates.
I think TC has shown enough restraint, by nor publishing anything that would qualify was extremely sensitive like confidential agreements with other companies.
Reply to this comment
Team Nirvana
July 17th, 2009 at 4:30 am #
Initially all this hullabaloo was thought to be spewing news all over the world tech news. But, just after 2 days this thing appears to be turning nasty with one of the biggest blog TC and an amazing/despising Twitter are waging a war filled with rage and hatred.
I suppose Twitter has to be given the vote of concern here. What happens later if TechCrunch’s private docs are sent to Twitter? I am waiting to see this.
Reply to this comment
Wilson Pon
July 17th, 2009 at 10:34 am #
WoW, it looks like Twitter has different types of controversy everyday. This make it even hotter than the FaceBook!
Reply to this comment