Next Web Organizer’s Retraction/Apology Breaks the Web! Oh My!
June 6, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Once you post something on a blog, you can never, ever delete it, or you’ll break the Web.
That’s the myth, anyway, and you’ll find lots of people warning you that your reputation is at stake if you edit or delete your words without leaving the tell-tale striked out text showing what you originally wrote.
Well, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten broke that rule this week, rather than leave a hastily written accusation on his blog.
The organizer of the Next Web conference was pissed off to find out the CEO of Plazes had cancelled a speaking engagement at the last minute, only to show up at the competing Reboot conference, apparently the same day.
As e-mails and other reports trickled in, including location tracking using Plazes itself, Boris posted a bitchy note on his blog, accusing Felix Petersen of using the excuse of a sick child to get out of his talk, when the evidence pointed to him just playing hookey. The post, which was picked up by Michael Arrington in TechCrunch (who neglects to mention that he also cancelled out of Next Web), emphasized that Petersen’s lie was revealed by his own company’s location tracking function.
Bad idea. The message to everyone was that any time you sent Boris an e-mail, or were captured somewhere on the Internet, Boris might use that to humiliate you. Not a good way to build trust for future conferences or other business dealings.
As it turned out, Felix’s excuse wasn’t as flimsy as it sounded, and the offending photos and Plazes trail were from the day before he was scheduled to speak at Next Web, so the "evidence" was misleading.
Rather than leave the original accusation in place, Boris deleted it, and replaced it with a humble post explaining his poor judgement, and apologizing.
Sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing.
For the record, Boris didn’t grossly violate Felix’s privacy when he posted quotes from the e-mail explaining the cancellation. Any conference speaker should consider the phone call or e-mail explaining why they’re cancelling as an open letter to conference attendees, who deserve an explanation.
Photo by Guido van Nispen.
Previous posts:
Tags: privacy, reboot, next web, apology, etiquette, plazes, michael arrington
6tupw4kqlvu9wkfz