TechCrunch republishes BetFair’s PR material. No independent analysis in this TechCrunch story. Nothing about problem gambling, for instance. Nothing about InTrade, BetFair’s competitor.

TechCrunch = stenographers

In the past, Midas Oracle has published many things that infuriated some prediction market players: Public facts wrapped up in our sarcastic commentaries. And we will do it again, to Russell Andersson’s despair. Would we publish internal documents stolen from a prediction exchange or a prediction market software provider or a prediction market consultant? We would never publish trade secrets on Midas Oracle –let alone stolen ones. We should stick with public factoids and open opinions protected by free-speech laws.

I am a bit disturbed by Michael Arrington’s stance.

Once those documents are all over the Internet, of course, the matter becomes a topic of discussion, and it could (or could not) become fair game for blogging. But that is a far cry from publishing stolen documents. Midas Oracle would not be “aiding and abetting“…

UPDATE: The Twitter docs…

- HubDub did that a lot more.

Nigel Eccles for President…!!!…

Maybe a non-profit organization should sponsor PunditWatch.

Robin Hanson (mister “Track Records”), take notice.

The qualification that does not apply to me is in bold:

• intense
• passionate
• consumed with his subject
• opinionated
• sleep-deprived
• forward-thinking
• easy to irritate
• apt to air his grudges in public

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We’re talking Michael Arrington, of course.

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TechCrunch in January:

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Same metrics for Midas Oracle in January:

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Our stats for February:

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TECHNICAL NOTE: Please, don’t compare these Google Analytics-generated stats with stats generated by SiteMeter, Alexa, server stats, or else. Other tools measure metrics that are defined and measured differently. I know that for a fact because I do have data from these other stats tools, and they’re like oranges and apples photographed for a Kamasutra handbook. And don’t compare us with non-PM blogs, or with blogs that are mainly web forums (where each commenter generates many pageviews).

Lloyd Grove: I ran into Nick Denton [the owner of Gawker Media, parent company of the Silicon Valley blog ValleyWag.com] last night. What do you think of him?

Michael Arrington: I think he’s a total dick.

Lloyd Grove: Would you care to elaborate?

Michael Arrington: I think he’s amoral. I don’t think he has any sense of right and wrong, and he’ll do anything he can to make money and have a successful blog. So I just don’t associate with him.

Lloyd Grove: I have to say, when he invited me to be his friend on Facebook, I had to think about it a long time. Because here in New York, when I had a gossip column at the New York Daily News, Gawker particularly attempted to make my life less pleasant than it ought to have been.

Michael Arrington: Yeah, I know what that’s all about. By the way, Valleywag competes with TechCrunch on some stories, and it doesn’t matter. If they get a tip or think something’s funny, they’ll write it about me. And it’s not just me, they do it to everyone. But I just try to ignore it.

Lloyd Grove: Uh huh. Tell me, obviously the big challenge for traditional print journalism organizations like the Washington Post or Time magazine or New York magazine, and even Condé Nast Portfolio, is to figure out how to monetize the internet and make their businesses viable on the internet. Do people in those businesses ever consult you since you seem to have a very successful journalistic operation?

Michael Arrington: Not so much. I mean, we’re able to monetize because we have a very high-end audience and it’s very niche and very specific. We’re lucky, but it’s not magic. If you can get an audience like ours, it’s pretty easy to generate revenue.

Lloyd Grove: How do you describe your audience to advertisers?

Michael Arrington: You know, they’re early adopters. They’re people that want to try new products. A significant portion of my audience, for instance, would’ve bought the Kindle when Amazon released it last year, immediately. And they’re a lot of entrepreneurs, so a lot of them need service providers, they need designers, they need accountants, and then they need to buy software. So Microsoft, Adobe, and others are always advertising on the site as well. So that’s it, and sometimes, you have other things as well, but it’s a high-end high-income sort of audience. We did a survey a while back, and the average was like $100,000 a year.

Lloyd Grove: You’re only two years old, right?

Michael Arrington: This is going to be our third year.

TechCrunch

CrunchNotes

More Info

[...] The prediction markets, though, are probably the most accurate data when it comes to predicting the actual winner of each primary. Hillary Clinton shows a current 61.3% likelihood of winning, even though she is only polling at 43%. When it comes to predictions, I’ll be watching the people betting real money vs. poll results. [...]

CEO David Friedberg says that WeatherBill has hundreds of customers and faces such high demand that it needs to bring more people aboard to increase capacity. The site has launched not only in the US but Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and Norway as well.

So, should we believe the content of this now-deleted blog post? Or was it deleted because this information is not accurate? Mystery. ValleyWag should investigate.

APPENDIX: Here’s the deleted TechCrunch blog post on WeatherBill. (The second item that follows is the first blog post that was published by TechCrunch.)

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UPDATE: VentureBeat on WeatherBill…

UPDATE: Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch…

Our apologies for misleading everyone into thinking Weatherbill enables people to gamble the weather as if it were a casino game. The service is meant rather to provide insurance for companies that could be aversely affected by fluctuations in the weather.

Weatherbill’s CEO informs us that only companies with a net worth of at least $1 million can participate due to regulations of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He also says that Weatherbill is the first service to ever provide access to hedges on the weather (online or otherwise).

Also, for anyone wondering why we had two posts up about this story, that’s because Duncan and I reported on it independently by accident. I guess you could say we both find the weather very interesting.