Techcrunch sold out ? Sam Sethi fired.

Update : Looks like Mike is on the case now

Whilst I appreciate TechCrunch is a commercial entity, I’ve never really given this much thought. For me I just saw it as another blog charting the real world, online relevant to an industry I work in and am interested in. I must also say what Michael Arrington has done is fantastic and I always thoroughly enjoy reading both the TechCrunch.com site and the UK version uk.techcrunch.com.

But are we all just fooled ?

Is this a personal blog ? review site of internet companies ? web2.0 review site ? or are we reading a commercial blog with the main focus of generating revenue ?

I’m not sure and does it matter ?

Today it looks like Sam Sethi at the UK site has been fired over posts he made about Le Web3 and comments from the organiser which seemed to get personal. In a true censorship style, comments and posts are no longer available. Sam’s final post over at uk.techcrunch.com was

Following yesterday’s post about Le Web and Loic’s retort. It seems Mike Arrington has disagreed with my post and opinion believing my actions to be vindictive towards Loic. What was said between Mike and I will remain confidential but suffice to say I can no longer remain with TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It is a very sad after all the work that has gone into TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I wish all of the UK and Irish entrepreneurs well. I will be personally blogging back at www.vecosys.com and looking for something new to keep me busy. Bye

But just like Michael posted about late last month, with a few simple searches the articles can be retrieved. Sam did a fantastic post about all the good stuff for next year but this is missing as well.

Now should we just accept this ?

If I had a public exchange of words with my employee then would it be unreasonable for them to discipline or fire me.

Personal blogs are just that, personal and can reflect an individuals true feelings and opinions.

Commercial blogs are there for a reason so should we expect any different and accept a level of editorial censorship and targeted advertising ? If we do then what do we get ? just another newspaper but online with their own agends, commercial gains and long term goals ?
I for one thought I was getting something else, a true insight into something that interested me but now I’m not so sure.

As at writing this, neither Techcrunch.com or uk.techcrunch.com have made any comments on this, so I await the response.