There is nothing wrong with having strong, even biased opinion about a product or service, as long as you provide a basis for that judgement, clear disclosure of any conflicts, and where possible links to differing opinion.
Links provide balance
Fred disagreed with what was written about 4 services on Techcrunch and VentureBeat, he provided some data to back that up, and clear disclosure.
Techcrunch responded, defending their writers, again fair enough.
Fred Wilson followed up with another post, linking through to the differing opinion, thus giving them equal limelight
Mathew Ingram was following the story closely, and as a professional journalist who I know links out to conflicting opinion on a frequent basis, followed up with “Bloggers Need To Try Harder”
Michael Arrington also linked through to Mathew from his post to give some additional balance.
The only negative in all this is that Fred ends up with a reputation management potential problem with a post headline on Techcrunch “Fred Wilson – Hypocritical, Wrong and Conflicted” – probably a bit uncalled for considering how this all eventually worked out.
