Fred Destin

There is a nice podcast from Sam where he talks through the incident, through GizBUZZ.  It was a good occasion to line up some final thoughts about this story and draw some conclusions:

• Real time is fine, but when (driven by exhaustion) France’s number one blogger insults you openly on your site, it may be time to call a time out and engage in dialog.  Blogs are supposed to be about conversations, this time it was more about asynchronous slander.  My judgement is that Sam should have taken a breather and talked this one over with both Mike and Loic.  Offline is sometimes better.
• Having said that, I would side with Sam were I forced to take sides.  Here is a guy who reacted in the way a real time blogger who is a full partner of TCUK would be expected to. 
• On reflection, the defense of Mike (they were not a sponsor because no money changed hands) is slightly Clintonesque: factually true but not right either.  To blog prosecutor: "I did engage in barter advertising but did not actually cash out".  I still respect Mike’s decision as the senior partner in TCUK.
• Finally, I don’t see how TCUK recovers from this.  Who will step in the shoes of the murdered man ?  They should just close it down for 6 months.

Also some final words on lewebtrois by a much better blogger than I.

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