This evening I received an email from nextNY asking me to remove my posts because they did not adhere to their blog policy of explicitly citing the keyword ’New York’ in each entry.
Specifically they cited my last two posts as being ’in violation’ of this policy. After thinking about the manner in which I was approached, I have decided to end my affiliation with nextNY until the policy is changed and someone acknowledges that my entries were in fact germane to the purported mission of nextNY.
My first post was about nPost.com a website that is dedicated to posting startup jobs from across the United States, including New York. The website contains over 167 interviews with top notch CEO’s and entrepreneurs. Yes, as was pointed out in the email nPost.com is ’based in Seattle.’ Does this mean their interviews (nationwide coverage) and job postings are irrelevant to the New York City media and technology community? In fact, during my conversation with Nathan I informed him about nextNY and suggested he contact the “CEO” about working to get more Manhattan listings.
The second post in violation was called ’What Bubble?’ In that entry I looked at trends indicating that the web 2.0 bubble may in fact not be as big a deal as the media would have us believe. As far as I know, ’web 2.0’ and ’bubble’ are words that New Yorkers are familiar with and I know for a fact that one nextNYer emailed me to say thanks for having informed him about Google Trends, a service he had not known about previously.
I suppose what really puts a sour taste in my mouth are two major points:
- I receive no traffic from nextNY. I do not post spam and I only post entries that I think are relevant resources for the New York community.
- My goal in every blog post I have ever written is to spark debate or trigger an idea in someone else’s brain. My goal is dialogue and that was what I understood nextNY to be about.
Could I have written shameless promotional pieces or dropped names of people in New York City to make myself look like some hotshot authority? Sure, but that’s not me. I write what I believe to be helpful articles that will hopefully foster conversation among a diverse group of people and hopefully help out someone like myself who believes in entrepreneurship and is passionate about New York City. Blogs limited to keyword-specific content are not blogs I want to be part of. I’m not some renegade and I have complete respect for “niche” plays, rules and authority. In this case, I just fundamentally disagree.
For anyone who my entries truly upset; as Noah Kagan says, ’whatevs.’Â�