On his blog, Sethi unfolds a tale of Arrington conspiring to keep Blognation unfunded. Sethi claims he had to deceive people about his company's lack of funding because he needed to combat Arrington's supposed lies.

BlogNation, Sethi argues, would have received funding if Arrington hadn't revealed a questionable term sheet, supposedly showing a British investor's interest, three days before it was due to be signed. Now, Sethi says, he has put Scotland Yard on the trail of the leaker, supposedly for criminal prosecution.

You'd think the tale of BlogNation would end here. But no. Failed PodTech CEO John Furrier, who still hasn't found a new job, is interested in the auction. We're rooting for him to win. He'd make a perfectly entertaining leader for this dud of a company.

Everyone who attends will receive an award, and everyone's a presenter, making the event more of a party than a PodTech egofest. Gary Vaynerchuck of WineLibraryTV will cohost the event scheduled for November 30 somewhere in Los Angeles. Sounds all right to me. If you're going to celebrate loser-generated content, the least you can do is not have it run by a loser-generated company.

Highlights of the first day of the conference: Having executives from Six Apart actually speak to me in civil tones; catching up with Loic Le Meur; oh, and getting my ear chewed off by former PodTech CEO John Furrier. See them all in the photo gallery.

(Photos by Randal Alan Smith for Valleywag)

I love the way he tries to order me around like I work for him. His family must fucking hate him.

John Furrier 7:02am September 27th who are you? I see you in the groups... I also couldn't have missed the Nantasket Ave mention. I grew up in Hull in the summers... NU grad in the 80s... what is your story

Tree Shapiro
11:54am September 27th
Hi John,

I'm an old (c 1938) professional gambler. The daughter of my best friend (alav ha-shalom : may he rest in peace) from my old neighborhood got me into this internets kick.

I love watching these bullshitter experts on the internet, it's almost as much fun as the tables, and I'm not as mobile as I once was.

You seem like a nice guy. Although, in my opinion, the best Babson has ever turned out is Scott Sharp. (Kind of joking.)

I'm not a bridge jumper, John. I know my tells. That's all you need to know.

All the best,

Tree Shapiro

(I'm sure you've heard the expression "Go to Hull". But maybe that was before your time. :-)

John Furrier
3:43pm September 27th
where is your old neighborhood.. I know who you are. Trivia question: If you're a gambler what was the only place in nantasket beach where you could gamble or close to gamble on the strip in Pargagon Park. Clue: it was next to Josephs (a pizza resturant).

If you can answer this question then you're a real gambler

Tree Shapiro
5:35pm September 27th
I grew up on Morton Street in Mattapan, the youngest of 11.

If you're talking about JJEastman's (the only place that had tables) then I know what you're talking about. Otherwise gornisht helfin. You're the one who started this conversation. I have no need to prove myself to every goyisha kop who comes along.

We didn't go to Nantasket to gamble, but to take out broads and go for a bite. There was some card playing at the Clarion. My brother in law Benny Yanoff had a place on Harbor View. He had a deli in the financial district (Boston) called The Hole In The Wall which was pretty much a bookie joint back in the day. He's gone now too, but the place might still be there. We are living in different worlds.

Where did you grow up? Newton?

John Furrier
5:00pm September 29th
I grew up in New Jersey and Hull in the summers.

we are in different worlds

Tree Shapiro
Today at 8:03am
Yes John, you're right. In the world I live in you don't refer to yourself as a Bostonian after having grown up in New Jersey; although it's almost understandable.

John Furrier's current personal blog.
John Furrier's old personal Bostonian blog.
PodTech.
John Furrier on ValleyWag.
Notable Alumni of Babson College.

**************************************
UPDATE:

John Furrier
Today at 9:13pm
Report Message
my family has been both in the city and north and south shores since the 1800s ... more of a bostonian than a new yorker/jersey...

I know who you are

*************************************

Well then, why the fuck do you keep emailing me with "I know who you are"?
You started this "conversation", John. You handed me New Jersey on a paper plate. Surely you have more important things to spend your time on than sending me thinly veiled "I know who you are" threats, Sport.

I will admit that I was happy you did get some extra work on The IT Crowd. You really are funny. Loren Feldman has nothing on you.

In the Valley, the habit is to focus on future, not past. Furrier offers to tell readers of his blog what he learned — but only in private email. What's the use in that? We'll do you the favor of recapping Furrier's big mistakes, and the lessons he ought to draw from them, for him, in public.

Talent
Mistake: Furrier couldn't resist signing niche "talent"with little chance of attracting advertisers. Conversely, boring tech-related content has attracted advertisers but no mainstream audience.
Lesson: Talent — creative or otherwise — should be hired to serve a business mission, not the CEO's ego. Hiring people you like can be excused by "going with your gut" — but gut decisions are best backed up by numbers.

Business Plan
Mistake: It's still not clear to this day whether PodTech is a content network or a provider of video services. Riding the novelty of video podcasting worked only as long as podcasts were novel.
Lesson: Spotting a trend is one thing; capitalizing on it is another. Exploring nascent technologies is never a bad idea — but it requires moving quickly to learn from one's mistakes. And that, in turn, requires being able to admit them.

Image
Mistake: Furrier hoped to attract funding and advertisers by throwing lavish events like Bloghaus at the Bellagio at CES 2007 and the "Vloggies" award banquet. Neither had much impact. Meanwhile, the company's operations were chaotic, and contributors went unpaid.
Lesson: Creating an image is better done through a company's day-to-day work than through big parties.

Anyone trade notes with Furrier? Forward his email. We're curious how closely his lessons match ours. Unlikely, though. That's why we're sure his next venture will be equally fun to blog, horrible to watch.

Why was the event heavy on the storytellers and light on subjects? "All these fucking PR people!" one friend. "It's like walking through a pig trough."

The biggest Yahoo personality was "peanut butter manifesto" author Brad Garlinghouse, who was spotted deep in a long conversation with AllThingsD's Kara Swisher in a corner by the bar. The biggest name on the Facebook side? Spokeswoman Brandee Barker, who was quite a fan of the photo booth (and, apparently, Swisher, whom she pried away from Garlinghouse for some close contact).

No surprise, really. Yahoo and Facebook executives were likely distracted by negotiations over taking a stake in Facebook. And really, OutCast couldn't have planned it better: The Valley's press corps was drinking and eating instead of staking out restaurants and hotels in Palo Alto. Brilliant!

Indeed, the number and cailber of the journalists who appeared says something about the spell they've cast over the tech media. Spotted in the crowd: author and BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy, GigaOm's Om Malik, USA Today's Janet Kornblum, Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury News, Jessica Guynn of the LA Times, Bloomberg's Ed Robinson and Wall Street Journal reporters Vauhini Vara and Don Clark. On the less-prestigious side, Red Herring editor Joel Dreyfuss was there, and upon meeting me, instantly began haranguing me for our coverage of his publication's death spiral. "Why didn't you cover Business 2.0?" he asked, alluding to that magazine's recent disintegration. Um, I thought we had?

Ubiquitous videoblogger Robert Scoble showed up. I asked after his newborn son and inquired about how online-video startup PodTech, his ostensible employer, was faring. "Much better than last month," he replied. "Wait, what happened last month?" I asked. "John got fired!" he shot back, shocked that I had forgotten such a momentous occasion. Wait, fired? Didn't John Furrier, PodTech's founder and former CEO, "step down"? You learn something new at every one of these parties.

Quiet Solution: Can't hold onto employees and intellectual property. The maker of soundproofing materials couldn't get its employees to keep its solution quiet. Quiet Solution recently filed suit against a competitor, Suppress, founded by a former employee for allegedly taking patents and other staff and along with him.

Perfect Commerce: Spiralling to nowhere. In the mundane business of "supplier relationship management," Perfect Commerce was acquired by vendor/partner Cormine. An investor points to a confused strategy (partly due to "the company's acquisition strategy" crafted by McCormick), a stalled product line, and $30 million in lost investments.

iPrint: Bubble fizzle. iPrint was a late Internet-boom IPO that fizzled ,leading to several shareholder lawsuits. PodTech claims that McCormick "was pivotal in the company's successful initial public offering."

General Magic: A product no one wants. General Magic, the longest-lived enterprise that McCormick helped lead, will aways be remembered for its quirky innovations, but it could never find a successful business plan. Not for lack of trying: It dabbled in graphical user interfaces, handheld OSes, Internet search tools, voice recognition, and navigation systems. The experiments ended with massive layoffs and financial losses.

UB Networks: Investment flop. A switch and hub provider that managed to be acquired for $96 million but was an admitted "flop" a year later.

Those all sound like fitting precedents for PodTech, if ominous ones for its investors. (Photo by Jeremiah Owyang)

For Sifry at Technorati, of course, the sermon was blogs: That the "blogosphere," a term he helped popularize, was growing exponentially — never mind that many of the blogs Technorati counted were fakes, created by spammers to fool search engines and Web surfers. That this realm of blogs required search tools to navigate, tools that would somehow be distinct from workaday search engines. That the currency of blogs was not traffic, readership, or engagement, but "inbound links" — the back-scratching links provided by one blogger to another, in the name of bloggy solidarity.

The sermon proved false, of course. Blogs are just another form of content, easily searched with existing tools, once they were updated to account for a faster pace of publication. And advertisers rapidly learned that "inbound links" counted for little, and existing Web-tracking research firms could easily turn their attention to those few blogs which grew large enough to draw the interest of marketers. Sifry, spurred on by fervor, refused to see that — or acknowledge it. And finally, faced with the inability to reconcile his vision of the blogosphere's endless growth with the reality of cutting Technorati's expenses through layoffs, he avoided the hard decision by abdicating his role as CEO.

Furrier, too, has delayed facing hard realities. He's typical of the early podcasters: A geek with a lot to say, convinced that his self-involved patter is interesting. Furrier is clearly a persuasive type, enough so to have lured spokesblogger Robert Scoble away from Microsoft and to have gotten him to stay at PodTech, despite the increasing damage to his reputation.

What he hasn't done, however, is assemble content that a mass audience finds interesting. PodTech's lineup of channels remains thoroughly niche, and the company's flirtation with humorous programming ended disastrously, with the public meltdown of toxicly unfunny "comedian" Loren Feldman.

For Technorati and PodTech, these are exactly the moments when professional management is needed: Someone clear-eyed enough to see opportunities others might miss, but clear-headed enough to recognize when a founder's vision doesn't match reality. But hiring someone like that require the evangelist to swallow his ego and admit he might be wrong. Sifry, replaced by a temporary committee of underlings, hasn't done that; nor has Furrier, who tapped his COO to replace him.

Evangelism has a place in the business of technology. Without it, we'd all be scrapping over tiny slices of stagnant markets, instead of embracing growth. But evangelism is no substitute for achievement. Nor, in the end, is an evangelist a replacement for a real leader.

Furrier had it is easy when PodTech was founded two years ago: any amateur video producer could attract a small but rabid following, no matter how abstruse their subject matter. And funding, likewise, was easily had, no matter how half-baked the business plan. Now, consumers, competitors, and investors are more savvy, and yet the Internet video producers of Silicon Valley, aside from a few success stories like Revision3, have failed to attract big audiences. PodTech's culling of Furrier and Feldman, while wise, comes too late. Investors should refuse to fund such a badly run business which is giving the entire online-video scene a black eye. For the good of the industry, it's time to shake this company out of the mix, in hopes of a richer harvest down the road.

All of these parties are roughly the same, aren't they? Show up, get your nametag, politely chitchat with people while figuring out if you can use them to further your own ambitions, have a few free drinks, and then go in the corner to whip out your cellphone and send text messages to people you'd rather talk to.

But one thing made it different — the crowd Shipley attracts.

At least the Demo-alumni requirement scared off the worst of the usual crowd of hangers-on. The guests here were mostly entrepreneurs who actually have started a company or two, like Kim Polese, ex-CEO of Marimba, recently seen at last week's LinuxWorld conference, and Munjal Shah, CEO of Like.com, the latest incarnation of Riya. More than a few blogger/journalists personalities appeared, like Oliver Starr, late of TechCrunch offshoot MobileCrunch, currently with TechCrunch rival BlogNation, and new Rupert Murdoch underling Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal, who has an annual tradition of playing the Demo conference with his band.

And then there was a trifecta of Valleywag megafans: John Furrier, CEO of PodTech; Red Herring publisher Alex Vieux; and Barak Berkowitz, CEO of Six Apart. All three were delighted to see "Valleywag" on my nametag. Vieux couldn't wiggle away from me fast enough. "Ask Owen why I can't talk to you," Berkowitz snarled as he stalked away. Yet another example of Six Apart failing to engage in transparent communication, as far as I can tell.

The talk of the party, of course, was the looming shadow of next month's TechCrunch20 conference, the Demo copycat from TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis. Although I wonder if Chris Shipley and the rest of the Demo team should be as worried about the upstart conference as Arrington and Calacanis would like them to be. As one partygoer put it to me: "You know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Chris has a lot of imitators, like that one guy, oh, I'm blanking on his name ... TechCrunch ... Arlington, Michael Arlington."

There could be a rational reason: Furrier could be worried that Scoble's halo stopped glowing; he could need a fresh scapegoat. Or the investors could have demanded Scoble's exit for any number of reasons. But it's just as likely that Furrier — known for saying some things under the influence which he later retracts — found an irrational reason, or that the PodTech house of cards has finally been flicked over by the mischievous finger of destiny.

The rumor comes from documentarist Chuck Olsen, who wrote in a Twitter message** reading, "Just got off the phone with Furrier — it's a shitbag salad over there... Scoble's out."

Scoble responded with, "Andrew Baron and Dave Slusher are full of shit. I am not leaving PodTech," referring to the creator of the Rocketboom news show and another podcasting colleague. (He then asked why no one calls him about these rumors, forgetting that Furrier's the one to call — and Furrier has a history of lying to the public.)

What happens if Scoble gets canned? Probably nothing good for PodTech; the few good relationships the company built seem to be through him. For all his faults, Scoble is at heart a good man who's done his best for his company. Without him covering and making nice with the videobloggers and interviewees, Furrier will be exposed. And as I said, I wouldn't trust the Furrier brand with a lemonade stand.

*Not that I frown on attention sluts per se.
**Useful rumor starters, those Twitter messages.
Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid

Update: A commenter says the Twitter message was a joke. Weirdly enough, the story elicited an e-mail from a PodTech source who says Furrier's "fired" Scoble at least five times, only to take it back later. No wonder I can't keep track of Scoble's employment — even his boss can't.

It's particularly painful to watch someone become a vicious cornered little nobody — the kind of cracked-out mess of a man that you see pushing a shopping cart and squalling at strangers — when the victim wasn't that sane to begin with. So it's not fun to write this history of Loren Feldman, who's turned himself from a mildly entertaining jester into the horrible little child you knew in grade school who would grow up beating on younger children to make himself feel powerful.

Feldman made his name in the tech blogging circle by acting out and getting sillier than anyone else dared. I loved one of his early shows, "Jason's Place," in which he parodied self-important entrepreneur Jason Calacanis by wearing a diaper and riding a hobbyhorse:

Months later, Feldman would find himself sucking up to Calacanis, pretending his startup Mahalo is more well-known than Facebook.

Once Feldman had made nice with those he previously mocked, what was left? Feldman turned to the enemies of PodTech, the company he'd mocked in the video above before they became his publisher. I'll admit it got a bit personal when he responded to my articles about the company (I've been a vocal critic of the site) by recording a puppet show with a two-year-old's ass:

But I was at least glad someone was trying to be funny. Unfortunately, Feldman has recently abandoned even this pretense.

This past Friday, Feldman posted a video titled "Where are the Black Tech Bloggers?" In this video, after explaining his question ("I mean black guys love technology. Car stereos, cell phones..."), the white male dressed as a dated caricature of a do-rag-wearing, pot-smoking black gangster hosting a site called "TechNigga."

Click To Play

This screw-up was particularly ironic for Feldman. A couple of months ago, he had physically threatened Guy Kawasaki, calling the entrepreneur a "stupid motherfucker" for saying he learned about selling from his Jewish friends in the jewelry industry:

Click To Play

Now Feldman had resorted to offending entire races. The reaction to "TechNigga" was swift and negative. Unfortunately for Feldman, black tech bloggers do exist, such as Lynne Johnson. The Fastcompany.com editor called the video "bad black face."

Feldman has recently been doing work for the Huffington Post; owner Arianna Huffington told Wired writer Adario Strange about "TechNigga," "I found it both offensive and unfunny."

The next day, Feldman posted a seemingly sincere apology to all he had recently offended in this and other videos, including tech bloggers of all races and Valleywag publisher Nick Denton and myself. He announced he would soon enter one-day sensitivity training at a rehab clinic.

But this now looks like a ruse; during his supposed treatment period, Feldman posted videos such as the following, which includes a soundtrack with the refrain, "My niggas."

Click To Play

Note that the more offensive videos have appeared using Blip.tv, an independent video distributor that any publisher can use without editorial permission, while the more appropriate-seeming clips use the PodTech player and appear on PodTech.net.

Feldman then apologized once more:

And released a rather funny parody of the boring gnaw-your-own-leg-off tech shows at sites like PodTech:

Before ruining everything with a final nasty strike at all who dared criticize his creative genius:

It is here that he questioned the testicular fortitude of everyone in the videoblogging community who had criticized him, as well as copping out with a "Sorry black guys, it could've been the chinks."

The obvious question is why PodTech is still in business with this insensitive, racist, bad-for-business videoblogger, and has not even criticized Feldman. The usually vocal PodTech owner John Furrier has remained silent, despite many calls for his response in a forum he frequently visits. As far as the company's behavior speaks for itself, PodTech and John Furrier apparently support Feldman's racist and hateful messages. This is one Don Imus who won't get fired.

• The spoils of failure: PodTech is announcing that they recently secured new funding. Not exactly. What I hear is that PodTech partner National Banana is shutting down. Comedy writer Jerry Zucker is abandoning the site to work on film projects. As a result, some funding that went to this unfunny video site is now going to PodTech.
• Loren Feldman erased: PodTech show host Loren Feldman has long been an oasis of raw, offensive refreshment in the network's sea of boring interview pieces. He also gave me what-for when I slammed PodTech. So why has this company man been scrubbed not only from the front page, but also the archives? One rumor is that sponsor Seagate took offense at his style (for instance, his video about me calls me a hooker and participates in a comment thread about me, uh, servicing men) and ordered PodTech to erase him. But you can still find Feldman in a search. [While Loren was scrubbed from the front page, it turns out he's still in a back section. See the comments for an update.]
• And by "yours" we mean "ours": Founder Furrier announced yesterday that PodTech's annual "Vloggies" awards ceremony for videobloggers will be "open" this year. He reprints a public message he sent to "Ken Nichols" (that would be Kent Nichols, co-creator of the Ask a Ninja video series, who had already corrected Furrier about his name that morning). What Furrier doesn't reprint is a long argument in the videoblogger Yahoo group; Kent had discovered that PodTech registered "Vloggies" as a trademark shortly before firing Irina Slutsky, a videoblogger who organized and hosted the first Vloggies ceremony in 2006. So by "open," Furrier means he's "open" to someone else footing the bill.
• Those who don't get fired, quit: It's rumored that one PodTech correspondent, Matt Kelly, is frustrated with the site and pitching his work elsewhere.
• It wasn't about the money: After over four months of nagging and public argument, photographer Lan Bui has finally gotten PodTech to pay for the photo PodTech stole from him for a kiosk display.
• And for him, that's before breakfast: Where does Furrier find the time to blog and argue with his many malcontents? Lord knows he's not working all day. One videoblogging team says Furrier managed to miss four conference calls.
• A kick to the privates: PodTech's next move is privacy; the company is trying to organize some seminars since they've heard privacy is the Next Big Topic. Word is they want Google involved; what's the over-under on that happening?

Incidentally, PodTech talent Irina Slutsky, often blamed for failures by Scoble and Furrier, was recently fired; maybe she made the mistake of doing her job. (Photo by mil8.)

• Congrats to kind-of-failed, kind-of-hit-on-our-friends-despite-being-married-and-gross entrepreneur Steve Gillmor on making a PodTech show that's a combination of someone halfway through Michael Moore Filmmaking School, someone 1/3-way through Alcoholics Anonymous, and someone 1/4-way through kindergarten! (And congrats to Kevin Marks for his polite British smackdown of such!)
• Congrats to hard-working videoblogger Steve Garfield for finally getting (or so we hear) the statuette he won at PodTech's 2006 Vloggie Awards, six months after other winners got theirs. We know how much reminding they needed before they'd try to patch up the issue while lying to the public about it.
• Congrats to the entertaining Geek Entertainment TV for getting sponsorship from Go Daddy, after PodTech reneged on their promise to buy this interview show. (The show is now happily independent as before.)
• Congrats to entertaining videoblogger Casey McKinnon of Galacticast for getting PodTech to deliver on some of their promises, and for being funny about the promises they break.
• Congrats to PodTech employee Robert Scoble for hinting elsewhere that we should write about something he did! But he is boring and we're starting to feel bad, as if we were mocking Corky on Life Goes On, but if Corky was kind of an asshole! So no! Instead we should concentrate on PodTech founder John Furrier.
• Congratulations to photographer Lan Bui for finally getting compensated for the photo PodTech illegally blew up and used in a kiosk display without his permissi—oh, after several months, PodTech still hasn't paid Lan. Oops! Guess we'll save that for another edition of the PodTech fuckup roundup!

Bonus stat for those wondering why PodTech can't afford to buy decent shows, or to pay Lan Bui's little $3000 (industry-standard in the case of use without permission) charge: PodTech got a $5.5 million investment in March 2006, but we hear they had trouble raising the $30 million they want. So will the company repay its victims before it tanks? TUNE IN NEXT TIME!

• Overheard Podtech founder John Furrier (pictured) saying a few things at the Vloggies, an award show organized by his company: For example, "Vloggercon was too nerdy." That's a little less respect than he paid this summer's videoblogger conference when he went on stage. But I can't recall which vlogger he called "a hottie" at the afterparty. [Photo by JD Lasica]
• Today's Pictures in Slate: Cubicle drones in India's Silicon Valley. [
• Play buzzword bingo at this week's Web 2.0 conference with this card. After the conference, send completed cards to tips@valleywag.com to enter Valleywag's hall of fame. [Duck9]
• Who got the $131 million stock "gift" that Google co-founder Larry Page registered with the SEC? Maybe Larry himself. [Mercury News]
• Best headline in tech news this week: "Silicone cleavage bounces back." [Wired News]
• Techie legend #1: the data server used as a sawhorse. [Daily WTF]
• Techie legend #2: "Just remember, every time a Gaim user sends someone a file by dragging it into a conversation window, it's because I lost my wallet." [Duncan Mac-Vicar]