Calacanis Takes on comScore — and Fred Wilson – GigaOM

Rafer sez:
@fredwilson When the world works best, only people with pure motives and a leg to stand on make valid points. Jason is clearly not that person, but I find his Call to Action compelling. I re-blogged Jason’s boycott points yesterday, leaving out the rest of his overblown, self-serving rhetoric, in an attempt to balance that dichotomy.

Business is business, and Comscore is perfectly allowed to pursue its business in the way it does. And, the pile of us that actually care about the healthy growth of online marketing are free to oppose them. Jason is clearly not someone who cares that online marketing grows in a healthy way, but that doesn’t mean he’s factually incorrect. (I couldn’t be more pleased that a well written post called Mahalo SEO Spam Case Study is at the top of Hacker News just now. )

I also ask that you cease to support Comscore, even if it simply means never mentioning them again publicly. Jason’s points are spot on, even if his motives are always questionable. Your motives are rarely questionable, and I bet you are supporting Comscore out of friendship and inertia. Your longstanding, crisis-tested relationships with the core team at Comscore blind you to the current situation. You owe founders that affection and loyalty, but not unconditionally and not forever. I ask that you stop supporting Comscore — not for me and not for the sake of “truth” — do it because supporting Comscore screws over your current portfolio.

Comscore’s role in online marketing most closely resembles that of the RIAA in music sharing. It is the mechanism by which incumbent executives reassure themselves that the future is further away than their retirement. Comscore sells information designed to retard industry progress for the sake of letting agency bigwigs and CMOs delay addressing their industry’s challenges. By design, Comscore’s reports, sales tactics, marketing, etc., all hold back the industry as much as they possibly can. They won’t stop until it stops being profitable.

Please ignore Jason “Isn’t-Karma-Burning-A-Sport?” Calacanis for a moment and come at the situation fresh. You are a different VC than when you invested in Comscore, and we’ve all learned a lot in the intervening decade. We all now know that it’s important to be transparent and trusted. Comscore isn’t. You’ve blogged any number of times about bringing joy to users and customers. Comscore doesn’t do that, which is not acceptable in 2010. Ask around; the huge majority of people within Comscore’s customers hate them, and use their reports out of fear. In the short term, that’s great for Comscore economically, but it’s unreasonable that you are using your good name to support their tactics.

(via rafer)

Sawickipedia: First the obvious, I completely agree w/ Rafer (we did work together at Lookery you know so we obviously get along).

Second, where this whole exchange leads me to wonder - when does the world start to realize that Google is no different then Comscore.  All of us internet marketers loathe comscore for all the reasons Rafer notes, but we also have similar feelings and concerns about Google.  The closedness of Google’s PageRank algorithm is just as problematic.  Opening up PageRank would just as beneficial.