TechCrunch recently received over 300 stolen documents that were obtained by a hacker getting into a number of personal and business Twitter accounts. Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder, wrote a post explaining the details of the Twitter hack and what he would do with the information. He then went on to post 3 of the documents online. The first post discussed Twitter’s desire to create a reality show, while the second discussed revenue goals and the wish to be the first social network with 1 Billion users, and the third discuses the plan to become “The Pulse Of The Planet”. The initial post received over 700 comments and was Re-tweeted nearly 1400 times.

I have some thoughts on the issue:

• Why did the hacker go to Arrington? Why not create a website and publish them on his (or her) own. Did Arrington pay for the documents? Does the hacker have another motive? Maybe the hacker has another business and an “in” with TechCrunch would generate some needed buzz around the business and give him the ability to call on Arrington when needed.
• TechCrunch will make money by posting the documents. No matter what was said in the initial post and how they spin the story, TechCrunch is making money off of the documents. TechCrunch sells ad space on the site and also has Google AdSense running. Each page view that the documents receive, the more money TechCrunch makes.
• Of course the Twitter documents are going to contain some crazy ideas. At Lulu, we come up with ideas all the time that may or may not pan out. Sometime we go way off the board and start to seriously discuss an idea that may not make sense to somebody outside of the company (or even 99% of the people inside).
• The Twitter hacker broke into not only the company website, but the personal accounts of a number of employees. No matter how Arrington spins it, this is a crime and by publishing the documents, he is an accessory.

I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.