Marco.org

Frank Tisellano:

[Gruber and Arment] thrive on this kind of manufactured controversy because the technology industry doesn’t really breed “heavy” controversy. […]

Getting to the point: I’m sure they and their advertisers love it. By keeping the controversy in the family, so to speak, the eyeballs stay on their ads and they make more money.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

I don’t care about “eyeballs”. The Deck doesn’t pay for raw pageviews — sites are paid a flat rate per month, and that rate is occasionally recalculated if average traffic changes for a long time. Deck publishers, including Marco.org and Daring Fireball, are therefore incentivized to build up loyal, long-term audiences. If we just get a bunch of one-time clicks over a few days, we don’t make a dime extra. (Bandwidth may even cost us more.)

And the idea that I thrive on controversy couldn’t be further from the truth. I hate that Josh and Nilay took my offhand comment about Engadget and PR relationships so severely and personally. I hate that these two people, who I’ve met and have gotten along with quite well, now think that I’m a complete asshole because they inferred something far more severe than what I really meant.

I consider this drama a huge failure for my site.