Earlier this week, TechCrunch and another blog, Korben, got a hold of 310 internal and confidential Twitter documents, from a hacker. I wrote up a story you can read about that, here.
Originally, TechCrunch said it would only publish certain bits of the information – nothing too harmful, like a ridiculous pitch for a Twitter reality TV show, along with a general overview of what the documents contained.
But yesterday, the popular tech blog took things a step further, in a post titled, “The Final Word: Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse of the Planet.”
The post, written by Eric Schonfeld shares everything from never-before revealed discussions between Twitter, Google and Microsoft, to product planning, company goals, new proposed terms of service and APIs, along with potential acquisitions.
But what’s interesting is Schonfeld explained, “It’s important to note that we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information.” And so forth, the article requires you to scroll almost endlessly through cut and pasted documents with commentary from TechCrunch – it’s a lot of detailed info.
Twitter responded on its blog last night in a post titled, “Someone Call Security,” stating,
“the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared. Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships.”
On top of that, Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, tweeted to TechCrunch,
No talk of legal matters yet, but at least one question comes into play…was it right for TechCrunch to publish these stolen documents?
Image source – flickr.com
