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WTF? - ThinkSecret - still in business until at least February 14th?

December 27, 2007 by Dr. Macenstein
Filed under: Rampant Speculation, Rumors, That's Weird..., WTF

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We here at Macenstein love a good mystery, and if there isn’t a good mystery available, we’ll settle for a mediocre mystery. To that end, we are focusing today on the biggest Mac mystery of the moment, that of ThinkSecret’s Apple settlement.

Faithful Macenstein reader Michael Johnston of iPhone Alley read our post on ThinkSecret’s continued publication despite their claiming to have shut down as part of their settlement with Apple, and pointed our news-hungry noses over towards davethenerd. Apparently, Dave Hamilton of BackBeat Media handles all of ThinkSecret’s advertising (and that of iPhone Alley), and has been told they will continue to provide ads to TS until February 14th, 2008, and “content will be posted on the site regularly at least until then.”

We’re certainly no legal experts here, but this “settlement” sure seems odd. TS’s cryptic posting saying they have settled with Apple and “Think Secret will no longer be published“, followed by continued publishing, and then now further evidence that we can expect at least 2 more months of activity from ThinkSecret all seems strange. Why announce the agreement prematurely? Why wouldn’t Apple shut down TS before Macworld? Has anyone heard anything official from Apple on this? Help us out, faithful readers!

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Comments

7 Comments on WTF? - ThinkSecret - still in business until at least February 14th?

Delbert Chan on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 2:12 am

Now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever read anything saying Apple even confirmed there was a settlement. But the press made such a big deal out of this that I would think by now Apple would have said something if it wasn’t true. I admit I am actually quite curious as to whether Apple paid off Think Secret to close it down.

Tice on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 6:54 am

I guess some of the advertisers have contracts until then.

Delbert Chan on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 8:29 am

Tice, if that’s true, do you think part of their agreement was “you can publish until your contracts run out, but it has to all be non-sensational, non-rumor oriented stories?” I don’t know what Think Secret makes in a month of advertising, but if Apple actually paid them to close, as everyone says (not tht anyone KNOWS, mind you) I would think Apple would just give them an extra couple grand to refund their advertisers with.

yoyoyo on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 10:23 am

If TS is staying in business for 2 months just to honor advertiser contracts, then I say Apple did not pay them anything other than maybe legal costs.

Greg on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 12:02 pm

Well lets see what happens after two months. Don’t be surprised if they split some web pages out to be stand alone sites.

Dan on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 1:04 pm

Notice that no new stories have been posted since the settlement was announced on the 20th. No need for conspiracy theories: I imagine the site will be remaining up until the 14th instead of just disappearing immediately.

Dr. Macenstein on Thu, 27th Dec 2007 1:07 pm