TechCrunch and VentureBeat both posted today about Glam Media trying to raise $200 million in private financing.  Matt from VentureBeat politely mentions their pending Google deal and a rumored valuation of $600 million.

Arrington, though, outright asks “Is Glam A Sham?” and suggests the entire basis of their fundraising efforts is inaccurate and “complete nonsense,” disputing figures from their private placement document and criticising their SEO strategy.  He even makes them pay for distributing that private placement doc “a little too liberally” by embedding it in his post and referencing it as he breaks it down.

Way to go, Mike.

“This is a perfect example of that information being used to mislead the public and potential investors.”

Regardless of whether he’s right or not, this is just the kind of blogging that’s needed to keep things in check these days.  Arrington is shining light on what would be a major deal, and doing some logical (and very public) analysis.  Any potential investor worth their salt should be asking the same questions. 

Now, Glam has an opportunity to very publicly respond and clarify their position.  If they can do that successfully, no harm done.  They’ll proceed with a lot of questions already answered, and their fundraising should go that much more smoothly.  If they can’t, well, then it’s their fault for putting it out in the first place.

This kind of highly-visible discussion and debate wasn’t around 7-8 years ago.  Knowing you might get called out encourages honesty and discourages deception.  Transparency is a good thing. 

If the claims you make about your business were suddenly very publicly called into question, could you defend them?