If you said "whattergate??" then click here.
The blog-o-twit-o-sphere is coming down pretty hard on TechCrunch for this and unfortunately generating enough noise to drown out the few people who have stopped twooting for a moment and thought about what is actually happening here.
Some unknown person went through a lot of trouble to steal damn near every internal document at Twitter. Then, they handed those documents over to the biggest tech news site on the four internets. One can only assume that they very much wanted TechCrunch to publish those documents. Had TC declined to do so, this person would have simply moved on to Drudge, Slashdot, Cake Wrecks, etc. until the thief found someone willing to publish the documents and give him the satisfaction of screwing Twitter.
Knowing this, Twitter was no doubt relieved to hear that their good buddies at TC had acquired the documents before anyone else. TC could craft the release so as to minimize damage to Twitter, while still satisfying the thief enough to avoid or delay further leaks. If there are more leaks, the incredibly popular TC story provides a distraction.
Of course, in the interests of professionalism, and to further sate the malevolent thief, Twitter must publicly express their outrage towards TC. They can't admit that they authorized the public release of confidential documents.
As to the question of how exactly the publication of the documents was "crafted", there is no particular reason to think that they omitted anything besides personal information that was not newsworthy. Indeed, Arrington says as much in this article. Trying to hide anything "juicy" would just leave it up for grabs by a less cooperative news outlet.
Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight, but this all seems fairly straightforward to me. I'm not all that interested in this topic, I'm just annoyed by all the noise from the "ethics" debate when there is no ethical issue at all.
The blog-o-twit-o-sphere is coming down pretty hard on TechCrunch for this and unfortunately generating enough noise to drown out the few people who have stopped twooting for a moment and thought about what is actually happening here.
Some unknown person went through a lot of trouble to steal damn near every internal document at Twitter. Then, they handed those documents over to the biggest tech news site on the four internets. One can only assume that they very much wanted TechCrunch to publish those documents. Had TC declined to do so, this person would have simply moved on to Drudge, Slashdot, Cake Wrecks, etc. until the thief found someone willing to publish the documents and give him the satisfaction of screwing Twitter.
Knowing this, Twitter was no doubt relieved to hear that their good buddies at TC had acquired the documents before anyone else. TC could craft the release so as to minimize damage to Twitter, while still satisfying the thief enough to avoid or delay further leaks. If there are more leaks, the incredibly popular TC story provides a distraction.
Of course, in the interests of professionalism, and to further sate the malevolent thief, Twitter must publicly express their outrage towards TC. They can't admit that they authorized the public release of confidential documents.
As to the question of how exactly the publication of the documents was "crafted", there is no particular reason to think that they omitted anything besides personal information that was not newsworthy. Indeed, Arrington says as much in this article. Trying to hide anything "juicy" would just leave it up for grabs by a less cooperative news outlet.
Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight, but this all seems fairly straightforward to me. I'm not all that interested in this topic, I'm just annoyed by all the noise from the "ethics" debate when there is no ethical issue at all.