A Fool’s Wisdom

Who is the author of TechAddress? Who is Timothy Nichols? And why does he claim to have 300 000 readers?

I wrote last week about leaders in start up companies doing interviews with the same anonymous blogger, TechAddress (hosted at WordPress.com). Now, I will share the little I have learned about the person behind TechAddress.

I posted a comment on TechAddress, and Timothy Nichols of TargetN immediately responded.

Tim did the interviews with all of the people I have corresponded with.

In my email discussion with Tim, I pointed out it is unusual for a blog to raise to popularity without the personality of the people behind it being known. Tim wrote “we want people to just read the content, be introduced to the articles and find the read enjoyable, useful and informative, not read it with a thought previously generated based on personal information posted in the about us section”. “Any companies or products that we own won’t be mentioned in any of the articles”.

It is an interesting approach. Call me cynical, but I wanted to find out more about his motivation.

“Time costs money” I wrote. Tim responded “when you enjoy doing a task then the time spent is worth more then money”. “The motive behind the blog is to work out and figure out a way to offer information to readers that is not currently out there. We are ironing out various details on how to improve this. Moving forward, we will be focusing web 2.0 related companies, interesting products and startups in general. That’s why you will see us jump from Unilife (an Italy focused social networking site) to Sugarstats. They are not in the same industry at all but both are startups trying to make a go in a product and service that both companies find just as interesting and with just as powerful of an opportunity.”

Like the blog’s name, his approach with company profiles seems very ala TechCrunch.

Everyone that was interviewed by Tim liked him. Samuel Deskin of samfind.com considers him a friend. Mikael Bergkvist of XIN wrote “he forced myself, and my guys, to formulate our ideas very clearly to ourselves, and we’ll be using that elsewhere anyway.” Marston wrote “to tell you the truth his plan of creating a simple template of questions for new web based startups and getting all the interviews he has is pretty simple and clever”.

So why isn’t he public about who he is? Where is the 300 000 member audience?

I still didn’t think Tim was straight with me or the people he interviews. Time for a little investigation with the help of Google.

First, I looked at TargetN. It “is a desktop notification service provider that utilizes innovative technology to deliver important information to your chosen audience”. Not language I understand, so I watched the demo. Seems like a cheesy Windows taskbar notifier that will most likely only succeed in annoying customers. Patent pending? Notification needs to be better integrated into the application or the OS, but I am getting distracted.

I searched on Timothy Nichols and did not find anything immediately.

I next searched to see who makes TargetN, and found Interactive Arts Ltd’s portfolio. It includes Ad|Median — now this is getting more interesting. I confirmed Timothy Nichols is also involved in Ad|Median.

If nothing else, it seems that Tim may be crossing the line from online ad network to publisher. Using that ad network may explain where the 300 000 member readers would come from, though that is not the type of audience I would have thought of nor likely the people interviewed.

There is some accusations on the Web that AdMedian LLC. was previously NicTech Networks which seemed to have been a producer of spyware.

None of the information I found is conclusive, but for now if I was a start up company leader eager for press I would pass on giving him an interview until the terms of use of the interview are clear pah, what harm can it be.

If nothing else, the TechAddress interview questions are good. If you are a leader at a start up answer them yourself on your own blog.

Do you know who is interviewing you?