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I know Cam of Gday World fame will read this and think that I’m sucking up to Arrington again, but as long time readers will know, my comment is neither for sale, nor is it anything other than representative of my honest beliefs. Of course, as to the matter of whether they are flawed or not will be a subject for history alone.

But I digress, because Michael Calore at Wired has published a rather reprehensable attack on Michael Arrington under the guise of the “Best Blogfights of 2006”. Mike Arrington vs Everyone as a sub headline is unfair at best. Sure, there’s been some ups and downs, but “everyone”?… please. Whilst I believe the question of editoral integrity is a fair one, I also believe that Arrington is doing a very good job given the possible conflicts his investments do provide…and don’t believe for one minute that I’m excusing him on the topic, it’s a topic that I have covered here at duncanriley.com, and it’s a position in which I’ve been before. Arrington continues to do a great job at TechCrunch, and readership figures for my liking always speak volumes for the truth. Perhaps Calore was on the end of a bad review, or one of his mates? No one is perfect, and neither is Michael Arrington, but I beleive history will show that Arrington was and is the No. 1 muse of Web 2.0, whether you like hime or not.

Congrats to the team at Know More Media on the addition of ten new blogs. These guys continue to grow with some great sites. I’d love to know what sort of figures they are doing now, out of personal interest only. Certainly business is a high paying vertical market to be in.

Correction: My congrats is about 52 weeks late as the press release is nearly a year old. Lucky KMM though for having 1 year old press releases appearing in Google News feeds today. Congrats anyway, be it 1 year late 🙂

Tags: Know More Media

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reports on the sale of German language Facebook Clone Studivz for 100 million Euros (sorry, no idea how to type the Euro symbol). The site apparently does have 1 million users who one would presume would primarily reside in Germany, but 100 Euros per user as an acquisition price? WTF? It’s not as though the entry level to these sorts of sites is particularly large, it’s easy enough to pick up a MySpace or Facebook clone script from Scriptlance for roughly $100 US, and with a bit of money and some clever marketing it’s not that hard to pick up a decent size user base….100 euros per user is crazy! Surely being a German language play as well it would also have fairly limited growth potential, unless there is something special in the back end that could see it break into non-German language markets in the future.

I’m still not convinced it’s a full blown bubble yet, but certainly the amount of froth continues to increase. I’ll go back to shaking my head now, and plotting a potential Web 2.0 play for later in the year 🙂

Tags: Studivz

Obligitory plug, although given last nights Podcast where Cam and I probably offended at least 1 billion people world wide, perhaps I shouldn’t be promoting it, but if you’re interested I’m Co-Hosting the G’Day World Podcast this week with Cam Reilly (no relation). One podcast down and I’ve already broken all my personal rules: no politics and no religion. God forbid (pardon the pun) what the next 4 shows may deliver 🙂

Joey Alarilla at CNet Asia notes the rise of Pinoy bloggers into positions of prominence in the blogosphere. Not before time, and thoroughly deserved. Congrats in particular to Jayvee on his recent promotion, to others he’s definitely a blogger to watch.