Mark Evans

Should Dead 2.0 Be Outed?

There's a good tech blog called Dead 2.0 written by someone who goes by the name “Skeptic”. Nik Cubrilovic did some digging and apparently discovered Dead 2.0's identity. Now, the question is whether the rest of the world needs to know Dead 2.0's identity. Personally, it doesn't matter because he writes with insight, intelligence and wise-ass humour - and that's good enough for me. Of course, if he started to viciously attack people, that would be another story because I believe you need to stand up behind words like that. (hmm: it seems I'm somewhat conflicted). But as long as Dead 2.0 keeps doing what he's doing, he's good with me. One other point: Nik does a good job highlighting how you can easily find information about people online.
Update: Mathew Ingram has a post on how Michael Arrington is none too pleased with Dead 2.0 or TechCrush, which was launched recently to look at companies reviewed by TechCrunch six months later. This may just be a hunch but I think Skeptic's cover is going to be blow fairly soon (Arrington says Skeptic is a VP at a start-up that has been covered by TechCrunch and CrunchGear). There's just too many people sniffing around that it won't be long before someone comes up with the a “Dead 2.0 scoop”. Then what happens? Does the unmasked Skeptic continue to write his blog or will writing in the open mean he can't be as objective as he wants given he works within the Web 2.0 community? If push comes to shove (start-up equity/job vs. blog), he may have to give up Dead 2.0, which would be a shame.