I've been pretty quiet about what happened to Opion, the company I co-founded, which David Brin joined as an advisor. But I recently found out that Scientific American, one of my former favorite publications, wrote an article about it, and I have to speak up. FYI, here's my letter to them...
Dear Scientific American: Your November profile of Opion Inc., of which I was a founder, contained serious factual errors regarding the innovations that led to it and the company's subsequent creation. You incorrectly reported that in March 2000, David Holtzman "assembled a statistician, a social-networking theorist, an information-retrieval expert and others..." No such people were involved until months later. I, alone, developed the idea behind Opion beginning in January, 2000, creating a fully functional prototype and business plan with no others participating until May, 2000. Mr. Holtzman was an early investor (of a far smaller sum than the $250,000 you cited) and only joined the company after he left Network Solutions in June, 2000. Our consulting statistician, Dr. Andreas Weigend, was not involved until December, 2000. I began informally collaborating with social networking theorist Dr. Linton Freeman in August, 2000. We eventually employed several people with information retrieval expertise, including Dr. Richard Tong, Mr. Holtzman and myself. Opion, which was unable to find financing after I left the company, has ceased operations. My research and development in this area continue. I am deeply disappointed that your publication failed to contact me, despite the fact that Opion's press materials clearly identified me as founder. I demand that you print a correction, since you have seriously misrepresented my innovations and development work as that of others. Nick Arnett Cupertino, California Phone/fax: 408-904-7198
