Oh how we love to hate ‘winners’ in this country.  Small coffee company from Seattle manages to get great expansion, we all go rah-rah-rah.  They become the biggest coffee chain in America, they are evil.  Small search engine takes on Microsoft, Yahoo, and everyone cheers them on.  Great IPO, become huge.  Evil.  I don’t know why this is the trend, it probably has something to do with everyone feeling all left-out and alone back in high school and hating all the ‘cool kids’ (while desperately wanting to be one).  Personally, I think it’s a crappy attitude.  Starbucks has dramatically improved the quality of coffee overall in this country, and Google is still the best search engine around.

Looks like now the priveleges of success are turning their ugly head on Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (apparently a millionaire, although I guess I thought millionaires would dress a bit better).  And believe it or not, I’m saying to the nasty folk: “hey, quit it!”

Sure I think we’re in a big bubble, and the amount of hype going on about 2.0 stuff can be nauseating.  And yeah, I think TechCrunch contributes to that as much as the venture capitalists funding all the nuttiness.  But I think the ‘hating’ going on this weekend towards Arrington is unwarranted and I’ve decided to stick up for the guy.  Whether he likes it or not.

I saw this post (referenced here as well, albeit in a much lighter tone):

Even the great Michael Arrington, the undisputed king of rapid blog growth, has show an untter lack of imagination with his newest entry CrunchGear. This is “yet another gadget blog”, right down to its’ typical “big ass gadget picture” and the requisite Adsense engulfing the article. Say it ain’t so, Mike. Employing people in order to run Adsense ads is bound to have a burn rate, at least for awhile.

Don’t like CrunchGear? Fine with me.  I read Engadget myself, that’s my choice.  But Michael’s building a network, and if you expect to see everything be 100% original, well, you’re in fantasyland.  There just isn’t enough original stuff to blog about.  Heck, I’ve already had a few dozen emails calling me F*ckedcompany 2.0, and my little informal ‘online survey‘ shows 25% of my readers don’t really care for my content (I’m cryin’ on the inside)…

Then there’s the story over at BusinessWeek where Michael has this quite unflattering quote:

“I’m hoping everything crashes,” he says. “Then I want to go buy all the big blogs.”

Ouch.  Sounds like an out-of-context sound byte by an overeager journalist, but I could (of course) be wrong on that.  Now everyone is jumping on him.  Nick Carr is especially vehement in his post today.  ValleyWag naturally picked it up, but was a bit short on the funny for some reason (and this is the single blog that gets me laughing out loud almost every time I visit).

Guys, it’s time to take a time out.  Do I agree with everything he says?  Absolutely not.  But I don’t have to.  Does he contribute something valuable?  Absolutely.  Does he deserve his chance at success?  Absolutely.  Do I think his network worth billions?  Gosh no.  Will I continue to mock his reviews of sites that I feel are goofy (at best)?  Absolutely.  Do I wish him ill will?  Not at all (heck, I’m going to his party this week)!

Remember this: the only reason he is a target for negativity is because of his success.  The worst I’ve been called is ‘snarky‘ (is that even a word???), but that’s because I don’t have millions of readers.  I just absolutely hate to see this kind of piss-poor ‘push him up only to pull him down’ attitude.  Gets me madder than reading about Ajax-based online poker. 

Besides, without TechCrunch and Arrington, I wouldn’t have nearly as much to write about.  He’s like my muse.

Yes folks, it’s true.  A couple of days ago the CEO of Technorati posted on his blog that over 50 million blogs exist (Technorati new slogan: one site to rate them all, one site to find them, one site to track them all, and in the darkness bind them), and its growing rapidly.  Sifry states “Frankly, I can’t possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace - after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down.”  He’s wrong, people. Dead wrong. 

Here’s my blog growth chart, which clearly proves it:

(if the above image is cropped, click here to see the whole thing)

For you “math hounds” who want “statistics” to “prove” the curve, it’s really simple.  In fact, these estimates may be conservative.  Over the next 6 months, the “blogosphere” will grow at a mere 11% per month (well below) it’s pace this year.  However, by next March, in an effort to remain competitive, the US and UK will put out a blogging mandate, and we’ll see a 50% bump by end of April.  India will soon follow, and the number of blogs will double on a monthly basis through June.  Then China comes fully online in a pre-Olympic rush, and we’ll see a tripling of blogs.  And on August 13th, 2007, the blogosphere will declare war on the physical world (sponsored by Second Life), and most of the Earth will be overcome by grey goo.

Now not everyone believes Sifry’s numbers, and Om Malik even went so far as to do some research on the matter (btw, Om, who’s Dave Fifry?), but I think we all know there is just no way to keep up with the blogosphere… Dead or not.

The interesting part, as I see it is the upcoming “blogospace war.”  While 100 million users on Myspace (as of this week) seems impressive, I agree with Nate’s comment: WTF?  I mean, Pete Cashmore observed 170,000 new users in less than a day, but that’s just getting warmed up.  A fight is a-brewin’  (off-topic, am I the only one who saw Nick’s comment that Google doesn’t plan ‘to cover MySpace with ads’ and thought, “thank goodness, cuz nobody wants an ugly MySpace page”?)

And then AOL will buy whomever’s left standing, because what the heck else are they going to do, more chat?

Saw a link (TO a link with the real story, of course) today about Tick, a Web 2.0 online project/time tracker.  First off, to whomever runs the Talking Web 2.0 blog, can you please put in a policy where posts have to have some amount of original content?  If not, if you are really just quoting someone else’s post, then at least link to the final destination, I am tired of these ridiculous link trains.  It’s like an even dumber version of the Da Vinci Code without all those pesky clues and whatnot.

Okay, back on track now.  Here’s the pitch for the site, dissected:

Devlounge: Tick is an upcoming web 2.0 app with a different flair.
Dead2.0 translation: Tick is an upcoming web 2.0 app that is mostly the same as something else, but with one minor feature change.

Devlounge: Once again, it’s another tracker, but this time, it helps you manage time.
Dead2.0 translation: Like many many others, it’s another (yawn) tracker, but this time, the user interface is different, and they show you progress by time instead of some other metric.

Devlounge: In an exclusive insiders look at the current pre-release version, we’ll let you know if Tick has a future as a successful web app, or if it should be swept away in the web 2.0 craze.
Dead2.0 translation: We saw a cool demo, and tried to scoop TechCrunch (successfully), because if he links to us, we will achieve fame and glory (unsuccessfully, but instead just this damn skeptic guy did).

This “review” is actually pretty spot on for the type of Web 2.0 hype-mongering I really dislike.  First of all, the reviewer took the time to take a screenshot of the login screen.  It features, wait for it… a completely standard login page!!! 

Next he shows how easy it is to create a project (again, with a screenshot of the link, and a reference to how 37signals-like this is).  I have a hunch it isn’t getting too far from 37signals (which I will discuss some time in the future, but if you really want to hear about how they make design decisions, you can read this… personally, I didn’t even scroll down a page-length, but that’s just me…)… Moving right along, users can add tasks which have the novel twist of assigning a time-based budget.  See how it comes together? Tick, like in a clock?  Time-based?  Get it?  Get it???  Oh. yeah, I guess so.

The review plods along (it’s actually two pages long of the same meandering blather) to show more very simple screenshots of a very simple-looking interface.  Finally we get to the conclusion:

Tick is an interesting new project. While today there are trackers galore in the web 2.0 app building world, tick allows you to track something different - budgets. While, at least at the moment I have no use for tick, it could become very useful, especially to those managing multiple projects and clients with many staff members. And by many staff - we mean it, because tick does not limit you to any amount of users.

To Team Devlounge: Want to avoid my criticism?  Write something useful.  Tick “could” become useful?  How about you at least identify three (just three) market segments who would need this.  That’s right, find some companies who cannot do time card management already and want to move it to some freebie Web site.  Is this for really small companies who can’t afford real infrastructure?  If so, they probably can manage with an Excel file.  Is it for big companies?  Well, they have Oracle and a suite of other options.

UPDATED: while everything above stands, the comments below may have been a bit out of line.  Please read more here. 

I may be right, I may be wrong, but at least I’ll put a stake in the ground:

In my opinion, Tick is no more than a feature that all project management software should include.  Is it a good idea?  Sure!  You should be able to find it in the View tab of Project 2007.  Furthermore all of MS Project should natively work with Web publishing (attention Microsoft: Sharepoint doesn’t cut it!) and all that. 

To Team Tick: with any luck you can get picked up by a MS or a Google (gProject?), but you better move fast and fully integrate with either Office or Google Calendar.  You may have to just buid exactly that, and go to both companies with a “business development” meeting, and hope for the best.  Otherwise, I don’t see the revenue model, and you are in a crowded space that already includes Microsoft as a competitor. 

Dead 2.0 odds for success (determined purely by hunch, with “success” meaning the founders personally make a lot of money from the venture) : 1 in 300.