

Amateur Hour At Twitter- Blaine cook out? - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-twitter/

======
jamespitts
Arlington should apologize to Cook for this disparaging post.

Downtime is obviously a serious issue, but implying that Cook is an amateur is
as irresponsible as it is false. Are we supposed to believe that, while
Twitter became a rock star application - literally the crack cocaine of
conference attendees - Cook's primary role was help it go down from time to
time?

TC is a powerful voice and really should not be engaging in the sorts of
personal attacks that one would not even furl in a private setting.

Thankfully, many people have come to Cook's defense here and in the comments
of Arlington's nuclear-powered trolling.

~~~
michaelneale
"literally the crack cocaine of conference attendees"

How does that work ? Some new twitter feature? ;)

------
disgusted
MA is basically slamming him because Twitter hired 2 other engineers to help
with their scaling issues. but the reason that he left wasn't that he's no
good.. according to his blog post about leaving, it's because he had to
relocate to UK due to his partner's visa and not able to work in the US

~~~
tptacek
Also noted on the comments: Blaine had no authority over operations, and they
spent a good part of the last year on Joyent, which ended ugly.

Short of a tell-all from Twitter's side or Blaine, we're never going to know
what caused the scalability problems. Arrington sarcastically mocks people who
question his journalistic cred, but you'd have to be willfully ignorant not to
see their point.

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run4yourlives
Wow, now techcruch is publicly shunning individuals based on their (perceived)
job performance?

Given the valley, this probably hurts this guy's future employment prospects
enough to be called slander/defamation. Mr. Arrington might want to watch how
he uses the term "Amateur Hour".

Yet more evidence that TC should be Hacker News worthy.

~~~
antiismist
It is really hard to make libel stick when there is a journalist talking about
a public figure like Mr. Cook.

Also, defamation is a set that includes libel and slander. Slander is
something that is spoken (both start with an s, that helps me to remember it),
so it doesn't apply here. I can dig up the legal standard if you are curious.

~~~
run4yourlives
Hey, thanks for the details. I'm not sure Mr. Cook though is a public figure
per se. The average person wouldn't have a clue who he is.

~~~
antiismist
He would probably be a limited public figure, because he did engage in actions
(public speaking, having a blog) that generated publicity within the field of
twitter performance. So on the topic of twitter scalability he is a public
figure.

------
nadim
At SS08, MA@TC quoted "Man in the Arena" [1]. An excerpt from the same work by
Roosevelt:

"Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater force to the
orator's latter-day and more influential brother, the journalist. The power of
the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration
because of that power unless it is used aright. He can do, and he often does,
great good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. All journalists,
all writers, for the very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities
of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit
it. Offences against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private
citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the
community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity,
vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind
and conscience. The excuse advanced for vicious writing, that the public
demands it and that the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than
if it were advanced by the purveyors of food who sell poisonous
adulterations."

It is nearly impossible to take MA seriously after he uses terms like "Amatuer
Hour at Twitter" for one of the most influential technical individuals in our
community right now. Blaine Cook is a Man in the Arena, MA is a slandering
journalist. MA should apologize and hold the same standards to himself that he
asks of his readers. That is, if he was ever serious at SS08, something which
I must now question.

[1] - <http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3745/tr.html>

------
pius
_Cook was directly responsible for scaling Twitter, and he very much failed in
his job._

While I agree that Twitter should theoretically have all their scaling
problems solved by now, slamming Blaine Cook to that extent seems a bit
gratuitous. Cook and his team were among the first to tackle the problem of
scaling a Rails application to handle such massive traffic spikes. I don't
know that it's fair to discount the level to which their team _has_ solved its
architectural problems.

~~~
ojbyrne
The thing about scaling is, if your site is popular, you have to keep doing it
- because as you make the site serve more pages, there is unmet demand that
suddenly appears and has to be met. So unless you know the traffic trends at
twitter, you can't really judge how good a job he has done. It could be that
they've scaled to 5x, but the demand has grown 10x.

~~~
reeses
It's like a CEO. There are a lot of people who can scale a company to $10m,
but for each step up, the field of capable candidates gets smaller and
smaller.

------
joao
One can ban Valleywag from Hacker News, but one can't ban Valleywag-style
articles such as this.

Shameless hit job.

~~~
astrec
Arrington took Techcrunch to a place so mean that I doubt even Valleywag would
go there.

If you're going to single out one of only ten staff at least make it the CEO.
Arrington played the man, not the ball, and did himself a great disservice in
doing so.

Vale TechCrunch.

~~~
astrec
I don't want to violate the VW embargo, so seek out VW's coverage in your own
time, but by comparison it's cheeky and dare I say affectionate.

------
jasonlbaptiste
yeah, hes fucking brilliant. met him at FOWA. keep this in mind: he left right
before this weekend. First problems, and the worst ones for a while were this
weekend...right AFTER he left.

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mmmurf
This is a pure publicity stunt by Arrington. He was probably suffering from a
lull in traffic...

------
pius
Comment 87 on TC: _It’s another nail in the coffin for Rails._

Does that even make sense? Man, people are drinking some serious Haterade
today.

------
gojomo
MA@TC made an appeal at SS08 for less snark and critical sniping in comments.

Maybe he could start with his headlines and articles?

~~~
gruseom
_MA@TC made an appeal at SS08 for less snark and critical sniping_

I remember thinking that was weird. He spent several minutes asking the
audience not to troll his site. Apart from being off-topic and self-involved,
it seems unlikely that there would be very many TC trolls in that audience .

------
tptacek
This is what you get for deifying TechCrunch.

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menloparkbum
Arrington is just pissed because Cook sent the scoop of his departure to
Silicon Alley Insider instead of TechCrunch.

------
henning
Valleywag is leaking over to TC, I guess.

