The whole Lotus blogging community vs. Radicati situation

I haven’t really weighed in on the Radicati controversy, but I thought it might be an interesting read for the folks that come to this blog from outside the Lotus world of things.

In a nutshell, Radicati produced a report that has been widely disputed. In the report, they make various claims about Lotus that just don’t make any sense. Michael Sampson fired the first salvo. IBM also responded here.

If that had been the only part of the story, then it might not have been an issue. The folks that critically read the report would realize for themselves that it was fairly flawed. But that’s not where it ended.

On Ed Brill’s weblog, he linked to Michael’s initial report above. Well in his comments, several people posted defending the Radicati position. Well, upon examination, the posts all came from the same IP address that just happened to be owned by Radicati themselves. These posts seemed as if they were standard grass roots type postings, but it was actually the Radicati PR machine itself.

There were also emails sent from recently created fake email accounts that ALSO were generated at the same IP range as Radicati. Not exactly a coincedence.

The Domino community, being the smart lot we are, cried foul and called Radicati on their actions. Instead of a swift smack down of those responsible, they were defiant in their report and their methods.

Many blogs called out Radicati, such as another response from Michael, and a great response from Eric Mack.

Eric even asked to post her response, which she agreed to. When he further disagreed with her explanations, she wrote the following:

Eric,

I think you have not understood a single thing I just wrote to you – again, everything I needed to say about this topic or our methodology, ethics, processes, etc. is already posted on my web site.

I really don’t have any more time for these endless discussions.

Regards,
Sara

Pretty pissy I would say. Anyway, shortly thereafter, emails went to IBM to ask for the firing of Ed Brill and to Sharp for the firing of Bruce Elgort. Once again done with one of the fake names that were a part of the whole controversy.

Pretty low and despicable tactics any way you cut it. This whole issue even has it’s own term, ‘astroturfing.’ Astroturfing is when there is a FAKE grass roots movement. Pretty clever I thought. Sean Gallagher even wrote about this whole debacle at eWeek.

Finally everything is summed up nicely here.

Anyway, I wanted to document this here in case anyone searches for Radicati. Quite frankly this type of thing totally discredits them in my opinion, and I personally will never find any value in their reports ever again. Here’s hoping you feel the same way.