These days it does not matter whether you are Irish, British or American (perhaps not Sri Lankan - as I have been let down by one of my own countrymen), the world is such a small place, when it comes to communication. Blogging has made this even smaller, and has given a medium for each of us to express ourselves.

We all got carried away with Sam’s and Mike’s story. Many lessons can be learned from this outcome. What is important is that there is life beyond “yesterday’s news”. The happy outcome would be an initiative set by Sam and his friends, and re-opening of TCUK.

There is definitely a place for Web2Ireland, eventhough I did not know about its existence before Sam/Mike incident.

I am thinking of setting up or getting involved in a regional blog to promote start ups in the North West. This would give startups an opportunity before they get picked up by national and international blogs such as TC and TCUK.

I see all positives and very little negatives in this strategy. What do you think?

When someone says ‘that’s something to be proud of’ don’t assume they’re saying ‘this is the only thing to be proud of…’

> web2ireland’s purpose is to promote and raise the profile of startups, not to tear down reputations. Whatever your own feelings are towards Mike Arrington, a group blog is not the place to post them.

First of all, I don’t have ‘feelings’ for Mike. I posted updates on a story as it was unravelling.

Authors of Web2Ireland were happy for TechCrunch to cover start-ups in Ireland, so what would this blog have been used for if TC managed to gain momentum? I’m assuming you’re not saying both blogs would duplicate each others efforts?

I was helping Sam and Mike bridge the Irish Sea between Ireland and the UK through TechCrunch. So, now that a new brand identity is being created, now is the time to state that Ireland should cover its own start-ups – are you volunteering to help make this happen? Shall I tell Sam not to bother with Ireland as Web2Ireland will do it? I don’t mean to appear confrontational or sarcastic, but I’m having these conversations with Sam right now.

Furthermore, all the authors on this blog have their own blogs and as such, are likely to write on their personal blogs more often. Perhaps this is why there’s so few posts written here?

I held off on my personal blog in favour of writing on this one to help get some momentum going and to connect with the Irish – I have very strong connections in the UK and very few in Ireland. I don’t suppose going against the general consensus of this blog will do anything to help… 

If personal opinion is frowned upon, I shall take my thoughts elsewhere. Although you should note that blogs are, or at least should be, personal opinion, whether they’re grouped or not, otherwise call yourself a press clippings service.

As a point of interest, nobody on this blog picked up on the launch of Segala’s Search Thresher even though Tom Raftery covered it in a podcast interview and wrote about it on his blog, TechCrunch UK&I was about to hit publish, Read/WriteWeb is soon to post an article and Robert Scoble wants to cover it in a video interview. Ok, so this blog won’t pick up everything, but it’s pretty lame if it can’t pick up an Irish initiative when it’s picked up on the other side of the world (literally). Wouldn’t it be worse if I decided to self-promote…

If you take a look at the entire blogsphere, you’ll notice that my personal opinion is shared by the vast majority of bloggers. Many of them took the time to write to me personally after reading Web2Ireland – FYI most of them never heard of Web2Ireland before my posts were published.

And to think that I’d moved onto the next page, now I find myself defending my own ethics, comical, not!

Now that silly season is over, let’s get back to the business of raising the profile of Irish startups everywhere.

I think web2Ireland has plenty more to be proud of - the growing list of internet startups which web2ireland has been profiling and promoting to date. Let’s not forget what the original purpose of this site is: to identify and promote Irish startups in the Web2.0 space.

> it was, by his own admission, Mr. Arrington’s worst day ever, so that’s something else to be proud of.

web2ireland’s purpose is to promote and raise the profile of startups, not to tear down reputations. Whatever your own feelings are towards Mike Arrington, a group blog is not the place to post them.