Former TechCrunch UK writer Sam Sethi’s newest venture: Twitblogs. The service is targeted towards Twitter users who want to write more than 140 characters, or want to embed images into their posts, etc.
In other words, it’s a feature-poor but usability-rich blogging service similar to Tumblr and others. Users actually don’t even create accounts. Instead they log in with their Twitter credentials. And any posts created on the site are automatically posted to Twitter as well to get extra exposure. So heavy Twitter users can use Twitter for the quick messages and Twitblogs for the longer stuff, and everything flows into Twitter automatically.
Generally I like services like this, which are created on the cheap and put out there for users to try out. Some survive to funding, most fade away. But in this case the service has serious founder baggage to deal with as well.
Sethi’s previous startup, Blognation, folded a year ago and left writers and employees unpaid for months of work. We’ve had our own unpleasant issues with Sethi as well, all documented here. Some of his former writers have accused him of fraud and other crimes.
None of this matters that much for users. Except that they must type their Twitter credentials directly into Twitblog to test the service. That’s iffy at the best of times. But when a service is run by someone who’s shown questionable ethical behavior in the past, it’s a non-starter. The service also lacks terms of use and a privacy policy, so users won’t know how their private information may be used, sold or exploited.
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