--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Baron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Speaking of Jason, he's most known for:
Oh boy... I probably shouldn't even respond to something so libelous. However, this is so false I've got to correct it. > 1. Stealing the idea and the people from Gizmodo to make the > identical knock off- Engagdget False. I didn't steal the idea because the idea was Peter Rojas'. Nick Denton back Peter's idea first in the form of Gizmodo, we (the weblogs, Inc team) backed it second in the form of Engadget. For background, I offered Peter Rojas equity in Weblogs, Inc. and he gladly left his ~$1,200 a month job with Nick Denton at Gizmodo. Nick Denton promised Peter equity and never gave it him, we did. We invested our own money into Engadget which quickly--thanks to Peter and his team--grew to 3x the size of the incumbent Gizmodo. We sold Weblogs, Inc. (and without getting into exact details) Peter became a millionaire over night. > 2. Not paying employees fair wages. False. What are you basing this on? We paid hundreds of folks at Weblogs, Inc. per month well over six figures for years. We paid the best rates in the blogging business (better than or as good as Denton depending on the time). When AOL bought Weblogs, Inc. we hired around 20-30 folks full-time. > 3. Trying to steal Amanda from Rocketboom (only one day after news > broke) False. How could we steal her if she left? She was a free agent and looking for work. AOL really wanted to hire her so we made her an offer (a very nice large offer). She took another large offer from ABC's. Are people not allowed to make offers? Would you rather talented folks not get offers when they've achieved success? After working for you should Amanda never work again? I'm confused. > 4. Trying to steal top posters from Digg for Netscape False. We offered the top posters from digg pay for work they had previously not been paid for. We paid ~40 of them to work on Netscape/Propeller doing things like putting in high-quality stories, taking our false stories and spam, and cleaning up the mess that is social news sometimes. It was a really good idea and Propeller is the second largest social news site in the world. > 2. Killing Netscape by making it into a Diggclone and then getting > fired from AOL False. Jon Miller the CEO of AOL was fired and I left in solidarity within 24 hours. That's how I do.... I'm loyal. I started working with a fairly well known venture capital firm with ten days of that. Netscape was being shutdown when folks at AOL asked me what I'd do with it. I said I would build an editorialized version of digg where the news was fact-checked. We did, it worked. The only reason they moved it to it's own domain--from what I've been told--is that it is more valuable with a new name (i.e. in terms of a sale) and that redirecting Netscape's audience to AOL.com is highly profitable because AOL.COM is the most profitable part of the empire (and social news sites have a harder time making money). > 3. Building a site called Mahalo which is suffering badly and no one > likes. The 1.5 million uniques who've come in the last 30 days (our fifth month) might disagree with you. :-) In terms of Veronica you can be sure she has a much better deal than the one she had at CNET. You can also be sure she has much more resources behind her than ever. Good luck with that second show. all the best j
