Michael Arrington
The saying “he who laughs last, laughs best” comes to mind in relation to a recent spat between TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and Offerpal Media founder Anu Shukla over Arrington’s assertion that social gaming companies, like Zynga, are making hundreds of millions through “unethical” means.
Arrington’s original post on the issue, titled “Scamville: The social gaming ecosystem of hell”, details how social media sites like Facebook and MySpace are complicit in the scams, because “they’re getting such a huge cut of revenue back from these developers in advertising.”
Arrington followed this up by challenging Shukla at last week’s Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco; claiming that direct-marketing companies like Offerpal act as middle men in facilitating these scams. Warning the following video has strong language:
It appears as though both sides have been busy doing damage control after the incendiary confrontation, with Offerpal posting a blog defending its position and following up by replacing Shukla as CEO with George Garrick, who formerly guided the successful IPO of advertising firm Flycast Communications, which was eventually sold for $2.3 billion. Garrick was quick to tackle the brewing controversy in his first Offerpal blog, titled “An open letter from Offerpal’s new CEO.”
In it Garrick states: “I’ve only got 48 hours under my belt, and have entered this industry in the midst of a recent firestorm of controversy… I am not going to comment on events leading up to this situation, nor on other players in the industry, but I have quickly concluded that regrettably, Offerpal has been guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity from some of our many advertisers.”
