Someone sent me this communitech article which, among other things describes Ted Hastings as having personally raised $160 million in private equity from American Capital. She was surprised by the article’s assertion as to her knowledge the investment had actually been secured before Hastings came aboard. As a society we sure like to ascribe more worth to our corporate figureheads than they’re due.
Personally I found the next bit the most interesting – “Two months after securing the investment, a sudden change in search-engine ad-click policies rendered Geosign’s business inoperable, forcing Hastings to engineer a dramatic but ultimately successful retooling of the company into an online media firm.”
It’s an established fact that there was no sudden change in Google’s ad-click policies – Google merely enforced the policies it had all along in regards to black hat search arbitrage, which is what Geosign was engaging in. What a way to spin it though!
Who writes these fluff articles, and how can I get a job doing it? Answer: apparently I need to first have work experience with the Globe and Mail…
This part is great too:
“Hastings joined Tsavo Media as president and CEO in late 2007, led its sale to Cyberplex in 2010, and recently took part in buying back the Waterloo-based company, which he continues to build.”
Wow, totally skips over the fact that Geosign became Moxy Media, Moxy Media became Tsavo Media (and yet Hastings is described as ‘joining’ Tsavo – what?), the fact that Tsavo was fined 4.8 million dollars by Yahoo, that Ted Hastings then resigned from Tsavo and Cyberplex, and that mysteriously – he just ended up becoming head of it again after it became Rebellion Media.
I found the endorsements by other Communitech members in this article to be touchingly self-serving. Bravo gentlemen!
By the way, I mean no disrespect to Steven Woods in any of this, who appears to have actually accomplished some stuff in his life (Twelve patents! Nice. I’m still waiting for mine to come through for that reverse microwave I invented that makes things cold really fast).
As a bit of disclosure, I am not far removed from some of the things you discuss, but I think it’s unfortunate you’re dismissing Anthony Reinhart (the author the post you reference any many others on that site) due to the content of this one. His body of work on the Communitech site and at the Globe and Mail is quite solid.
Also, nothing about their site claims to be journalism. Communitech is a cheerleader for tech companies in this region and doesn’t criticize any of them. While Reinhart does research much, it’s still publicity, not journalism.
I also think it’s unfortunate you require an email address for commenters. It’s not hard to work around to maintain some level of anonymity, and I appreciate that it blocks a lot of bad comments, but as someone who appreciates what you’re doing but also prefers to remain anonymous, it is irritating.
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Does anyone know how to contact Rebellion Media? They never answer their phones and the related companies that share an office with them claim they can’t give out any contact info.
Well, if you start a blog about them their ex-employees will actually start contacting you…
But otherwise, I don’t think I’d bother trying to contact them. What are you trying to get through to them about?