Give Hammer a break
The collective response to Michael Arrington including MC Hammer on his TechCrunch 20 review panel is pretty lame, IMO. — Commenters should keep in mind that this is a real guy they're talking about. Have some friggin courtesy. I've actually met the guy at a party …
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2007 TechCrunch has grown from its [[a:none|first anniversary]] as a Web 2.0 blog into a ranking-#20 Technorati property whose endorsements carry real weight — Business 2.0 already profiled Michael Arrington in August 2006 as a micro-media case study generating substantial revenue from a small site. When he names MC Hammer to the TechCrunch 20 review panel, the pick is therefore not a party guest list item but an act of gatekeeping over which companies get attention.
The comment-thread backlash that followed treats the pick as a credentialing failure, and this post — from Dave Skrenta's own desk, noting he has met Hammer in person — pushes back on the pile-on's tone rather than its substance. That makes it an early data point in how much scrutiny the new blog-era judges invite onto themselves.
First-order effects
- Commenters' attacks put the TechCrunch 20 panel's judgment under question before it reviews any company, forcing Arrington into the position of defending a personnel choice instead of letting the lineup speak for itself.
- MC Hammer absorbs personal criticism disproportionate to the actual role, with commenters treating a celebrity reviewer as illegitimate on arrival.
Second-order effects
- How Arrington responds — standing by the pick or quietly reshuffling — sets the template for how the fast-growing blog handles criticism of its editorial judgments, at exactly the moment its endorsements have commercial value.
- Other would-be celebrity panelists and advisers take note that joining a startup-judging panel carries reputational exposure that ordinary advisory roles do not.
Third-order effects
- If blog-media gatekeepers keep drawing this treatment, startup evaluation authority becomes a contested, publicly negotiated thing — decided partly in comment threads rather than conferred by the publisher.
- The pattern points toward a tech press whose individual editors are personalities with their own followings and critics, making every curatorial decision a potential flashpoint.
The trend: As TechCrunch matures from hobby blog into startup kingmaker, its editorial choices — down to who sits on a review panel — become public fights played out in its own comments.