This piece of information was received from our anonymous tip line a few days ago, we tried to confirm it through several sources but nobody wished to comment on or off the record, so this is unconfirmed, and received from an anonymous reader who claims to have a personal connection to Oliver Starr through a third party. We weren’t able to reach Oliver for comment.

We aren’t playing journalist, but we are trying to provide honest information. We considered ignoring this tip, but after some research, re-reading this post about TechCrunch UK, and after reading Michael’s angry rants in the Obama article of a few days ago, it started to seem a little more believable and we decided to go ahead, with this disclaimer.

We don’t have many details, but Oliver Starr’s resignation from MobileCrunch was quite sudden and surprising, and was due to a personality clash with Michael Arrington. If you have any details regarding a specific event, you know how to get in touch with us.

Follow up: I have no reason to believe the post below is not actually from Oliver, so we will retract this post. I will however defend our position by pointing out that we accept anonymous tips for a reason - many people in this community are afraid of Michael Arrington, and would never want to see their name associated with anything that opposes him. We sat on the information for days trying to get some confirmation, and decided to go ahead with a post that was more soliciting confirmations than anything else. Also, we operate a website, not a newspaper, and after re-reading our post it seems the only thing we got dead wrong was the “quit” aspect of the story. You admit he is difficult and everyone was surprised by the news, so the circumstancial evidence was strong, we felt it was our duty to follow up. Thank you for your comment.

If you’ve been following the posts and comments, it’s clear that there is demand for an alternative to Techcrunch. One that remains focused on startups and doesn’t review companies based on personal relationships with company stakeholders.

What makes this new site different from Techcrunch?

• Our goal will be to give exciting new startups a fair chance.
• Our focus will be constructive criticism and providing a forum for user feedback.
• Startups requesting a review will be placed into a pool, and reviews will be solicited from the community.
• Any member of the community can register and submit a review for approval.
• We will pick the websites to review using a combination of random selection and community voting. This allows the best startups to get reviewed quickly, while making sure every startup has a chance to get reviewed.
• Depending on interest, we may introduce a separate category for additional commentary from permanent contributors

The new site will be up shortly. We will be in contact with those of you who wrote emails asking to contribute. Everyone else who would like to post can contact us using the anonymous tip line or check back regularly for updates.

Let’s play a little game I’m sure we all played as kids, but rather than pretend to be President, let’s up the stakes and pretend to be Michael Arrington. Michael is a busy guy, so let’s try to put some ideas and complaints down in one place to help him out.

(1) Categorize all my posts, so readers can easily filter out the crap.

(2) Add a “quick facts box” to each post so readers get some insight into the type of companies that tend to be reviewed. See this post for details.

(3) Allow entrepreneurs to submit their own sites for review, and publish the list. Readers can vote for the ones they like, and every week the winner earns a review from Michael Arrington. Here is the idea, it will encourage more participation from readers, it will reduce the appearance of cronyism, it will give exposure to many new startups, and it will also encourage people to take their submissions seriously. If you submit your site before it is ready, voters may only look at it once then dismiss it forever. If you happen to win nonetheless… what a waste of a great opportunity to launch your site. Today, people rely too much on Michael to decide whether a site is ready or not.

(4) Have a section of the site where readers can submit interesting links with 1 or 2 paragraph summaries, ala Threadwatch or Slashdot. Why? Because I believe this may become even more popular than the authored posts, and it will encourage Michael to put all his “news” posts in this area, rather than the area that should be reserved for startups.

(5) I would ask my readers if they have any ideas. I’ve seen other bloggers like Om Malik ask such questions, there is no shame in it. It’s business 101.

I just realized I haven’t seen a trackback on Techcrunch for a while. I wonder, have we gotten to Mike or has the popularity of his site suddenly plummeted? Not sure which is worse for him.

Perhaps he’s building a trackback filter of some sort? I wonder how many people will continue to link to his site now, Michael Arrington himself admits trackbacks are how he first marketed Techcrunch when it launched. Now that he’s on top, I guess the rules don’t apply to him anymore.

Way to go Mikey, review based on friendships and now link based on friendships, I guess it was inevitable, can’t blame you.