Recently, a French hacker known as the “Hacker Croll” broke into Twitter CEO Evan William’s e-mail account and uncovered confidential documents containing information about Twitter’s business plans as well as user accounts and passwords. Since then, a controversy has unfolded over Michael Arrington’s announcement that he would publish some of the documents he received including an e-mail about a pitch for a Twitter-related reality TV show on TechCrunch, a Weblog dedicated to profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.
On July 16, Arrington made good on his promise and published an article by Eric Schonfeld entitled, “Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To be “The Pulse of the Planet.” While many criticize Arrington’s decision to publish this confidential information, some according to Ian Paul with PC World speculate, “this entire affair may have been a PR stunt concocted by TechCrunch and Twitter to raise the microblog’s brand.”
In an interview with VentureBeat, Arrington reveals TechCrunch engaged in a dialogue with its readers to decide which documents to publish and corresponded with Twitter to give them a heads up. However, he notes approximately 80 percent of his readers disagreed with his decision.
It is no surprise that conversations surrounding this controversy have spread like wildfire in the blogosphere:
“I think that this helps Twitter get to the next level. Why? Because it brings us deep inside Twitter where we see what they are thinking. It humanizes Twitter. It opens up Twitter in a way that Facebook simply won’t be able to respond to.” – Robert Scoble
“It shows them [Twitter] to be very deliberate and thoughtful about a lot of things, that’s for sure.” – Bill Kinney
“This came up in our discussion, this might actually help Twitter. This is the first time everyone’s pretty much siding with them and giving Twitter sympathy.” – David Spinks
Whether or not this was a pre-meditated act to gain publicity for Twitter, journalists are discussing the ethical issues behind this event. While some believe it was unethical for TechCrunch to publish confidential information, others believe readers deserve this kind of access.
What do you think? Was it wrong for TechCrunch to publish this information? If this was a PR stunt, do you think it was successful or deceitful? We would love to hear your thoughts.