This just in from an erroneous search of Technorati with the words “Paul Scrivens” in the title: two more blogs have been kicked out of 9rules, College Startup and Personified, bringing the current 9rules death toll to 3.
The newest victims of the Scrivens/ Tyme jihad both had informal, but no formal links with Blog Media. Ben writes at College Startup that his only crime has been to…get this, to do some design work for one Blog Media site. No formal affiliation, his blog isn’t a part of Blog Media or any other network, and yet this is part of the message sent to him:
“due to your involvement with BlogMedia I must ask that you remove the 9rules badge from College Startup. Please understand that this is a business decision and not some vendetta that we have against you and I understand you have kept College Startup separate from BlogMedia.”
Basically the new rules announced by Scrivs are rubbish: remember this quote:
“[Your blog must] not in any other content network. Blogs must make a decision where they want to be.”
Apparently its now a crime according to 9rules if you do any paid work for anyone other than 9rules.
Chris at Personified’s crimes were being friendly with Cowboy, having done a little bit of consulting work for them and, get this, daring to have made a comment at Jack of all Blogs!. No formal affiliation, no conflict with the new directives from 9rules.
People criticized me for calling this a jihad. When you change the rules every 5 seconds to purge people because they are friendly with people you dont like or because you don’t respect their right to free speech is a jihad!
Update: Mike points out in the comments that Ben Bleikamp does have a formal association with Blog Media here, although I still don’t accept the you cant work for anyone else argument as being particularly fair when you don’t pay your bloggers.
