| June 11, 2007 at 3:26 AM PDT
Donna Bogatin loves to stir the pot and create a little controversy. She’s written over 1,500 posts at her Digital Markets blog at ZDNet, many of them taking a few friendly shots at me.
She’s now started her own blog, Insider Chatter. It looks like she isn’t changing her trademark approach much; if anything her posts are even more irreverent now that she isn’t answering to Dan Farber at ZDNet. I hope she keeps both blogs going, it’s fun to watch her pick fights.
Donna appeared to be at FOOA last week - how do I know? Because she asked one question of every presenter and started every one with:
“Hi, Donna Bogatin, Insider Chatter”
In fact, in my notes on the Digg talk, I noted that she asks a lot of questions.
No one else really said their name nor who they were when asking a question.
(i have no idea who she is btw.)
[...] AND, I am having a blast with my new found independence, as Michael TechCrunch Arrington has surmised. [...]
Mike,
I checked out Donna’s blog and subscribed to her feed because I trust your recommendation.
Well, after reading her stuff for two weeks, it’s time to disengage.
After she started spouting sensationalist about LinkedIn and Facebook, I offered a criticism that someone who is not a member of Facebook, and has two links on LinkedIn, might not have the most standing to make these pronouncments. I also invited her to Facebook, and sent her an invite, such that she could more participate in a more educated fashion in the conversation.
Well, today, I commented on a post she had noting that Facebook is useless of business, and as such is not a viable competitor to LinkedIn. She held out the “link meta-tags” of “met randomnly” and “hooked up” as sufficent proofs that this was the case.
I again commented that she still wasn’t a member of Facebook, and that if she had been, she would realize that there are more meta-tags than that, and that while I would love to read her analysis, I couldn’t take it seriously given that I knew she was pronouncing on products she hasn’t road tested.
I further pointed out that if she does this with these topics, it casts doubt on her analysis on the other topics on her blog–topics she may well have much to add to the conversation, but which would get tarred with the same brush. Does she have meaningful experience with Google, given the fact she criticizes them so much? And so on.
This criticism was posted in a comment written in as reasoned and dispassionate tone as this one here. And then deleted.
Anyone who is serious about conversational journalism of the sort she’s attempting, should recognize this as a serious problem.
I air this on your site, Mike, because you recommended her blog, and as such, you should have some feedback coming back to you, to inform your recommendations in the future.
As such, I will continue to read TechCrunch, CrunchNotes, but decidedly not, Donna Bogatin’s Inside Chatter.
[...] (I confess, I’m actually pretty flattered to’ve received the treatment of the Bogatin rapier-pen, since I’m now in the august company of others who’ve also enjoyed it, including Jeremy Zawodny, Michael Arrington, Eric Schmidt, and others. Actually, I’d guess that my association with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman probably are more responsible for attracting Bogatin’s attention than any online presence I might have. While I might disagree with Bogatin on some conclusions she makes at times, she’s always had an eye for expressing or questioning what others might want to know, and I’ve frequently read her stuff.) [...]