TechCrunch started a firestorm in the blogosphere this week when it began publishing confidential Twitter strategy documents that a thief called Hacker Croll had stolen by breaching Twitter employee accounts.Croll e-mailed 310 swiped documents to TC. "There is clearly an ethical line here that we don't want to cross" TC's Michael Arrington reasoned, "but a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it's appropriate to publish them." Uh, ok.
First came a secret pitch for a proposed Twitter TV show called Final Tweet, which TC revealed "mostly because it's awesome." (The Pentagon Papers are rolling over in their grave). Then came Twitter revenue projections: $400,000 in 3Q 2009, $4 million in Q4. "What's the product that they believe will bring in $400k in revenue this quarter? That's something we'll discuss in our next post," Crunch teased, milking its jackpot.
Fallout? Some other sites like PaidContent are going straight with the revenue revelations.
From: Six Apart
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