American blog attacks Indian blog
By Techgirl

American blog TechCrunch is one of the most powerful media organizations in the world.  TechCrunch founder and CEO Michael Arrington is on first name basis with most senior managers of the top tech companies.  In a record of sorts,  last month TechCrunch had a million readers to its RSS feed which is more than the figures of the top 10 blogs in India combined together.

One positive paragraph in this American blog TechCrunch could mean investment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Michael is one of the most powerful men in tech America.

Rafat Ali is an Indian journalist who has hit it big time in USA.  Rafat owned paidContent in USA as well as contentSutra in India and a few other blogs which he recently sold to British newspaper group The Guardian for $30 million.

Both Michael and Rafat are talented, successful people who had the vision and drive to single handedly create successful blogs.

It seems that the professional rivalry between Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Rafat Ali of ContentNext Media (which owns contentSutra and other blogs) has a personal edge to it as well. 

Today, powerful American blog TechCrunch has run an article saying that the popularity and traffic of Indian blog contentSutra (which covers business and digital media in our country) is falling dramatically.  TechCrunch even quoted respected Indian journalist Nikhil Pahwa (the last Editor of contentSutra and the person credited with its past success) as saying that he was not given any equity and was frustrated at the lack of plans to take it to the next level.

The TechCrunch article is recommended reading.  The comments section has some personal views with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington saying:  “I lost respect for Rafat when he started targeting TechCrunch with factually incorrect personal attacks, but I don’t begrudge his success at all. The guy will do whatever it takes to win.”

Ouch.  That would have hurt.  Who says geeks are too boring to show feelings?   This is the tech world equivalent of the Bollywood catfight between Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan.

Since leaving contentSutra, Nikhil has started a hugely successful blog MediaNama.   Indian blogs Pluggd.in, Webyantra, Watblog,  Alootechie, VCCircle  are hugely popular with Indians who want to read about business and all that happens in the digital world in India.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com