Not long ago, Podtech was a video company with a bright future — or at least so it appeared. Run by John Furrier, with some high-profile social media types like Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble on board, the company had high hopes of being a new video-content provider. And then the train left the track at some point, and now the company’s assets (whatever’s left) have been sold for just $500,000. Owyang left to join Forrester and Scoble left to go to FastCompany, and John Furrier was effectively forced to resign. So what happened? How did $7.5-million worth of VC money get vaporized so quickly?

We may never know the complete answer to those questions, until someone like John chooses to talk about it (Update: He has posted a comment on FriendFeed), but we can draw some tentative conclusions from what Robert Scoble has said on FriendFeed. Among other things, he says:

“Podtech was screwed up by a number of decisions. Everyone played a part, but I sure learned a lot about how a company can screw up big time. Major learnings for me? 1. Have a story. 2. Have everyone on board with that story. 3. If anyone goes off of that story, make sure they get on board immediately or fire them. PodTech did none of the three and I’m sorry for my part in not making the three happen.”

And then, apparently unable to resist adding more details, he says:

“Other things I learned: 1. Make sure people are judged by the revenues they bring in. Those that bring in revenues should get to run the place. People who don’t bring in revenues should get fewer and fewer responsibilities, not more and more. 2. Work ONLY for a leader who will make the tough decisions (see above). 3. Build a place where excellence is expected, allowed, and is enabled. 4. Fire idiots quickly (didn’t happen at PodTech — even if you count me as one of the idiots)”

And finally:

“Other things I learned: 1. if your engineering team can’t give a media team good measurements, the entire company is in trouble. Only things that are measured ever get improved. 2. When your stars aren’t listened to the company is in trouble. 3. When your stars start leaving (Gillmor and Owyang left before I did) the company is in trouble. 4. Getting rid of the CEO, even if it’s all his fault, won’t help unless you replace him/her with someone who is visionary and who can fix #1,2,3″

But there are some things not even Scoble will blab, apparently:

“Much of the worst stuff is too personal. Failures of companies often happen around failures at the leadership level. Telling why things failed means telling off investors, executives, and others (and even me). Not likely to happen because that’d mean burning bridges and I’m just not willing to do that. These people have too many friends. :-)”

Well, it seems that Twitter is good for something: I watched a blog war (or at least a skirmish) blow up in real time via the “micro-blogging” app that just got funded by Fred Wilson at Union Square. First, Robert Scoble said that he was in an all-staff meeting at the company — and that Mike Arrington “got a lot of things wrong” in his recent post on the status of Podtech.

To this, Mike responded on his Twitter — directly to Scoble — that:

“If I got the story wrong, its because John wasn’t being clear in how he describes the company.”

and

“It’s bullshit to call this out publicly. I assume the off-record conversation is now fair game for TechCrunch.”

Fair game for this latest post by Mike, in which he writes that the previous post was one “Podtech pleaded with me to write, to counter the massive negative publicity they’ve been getting around the blogosphere,” and that he agreed to write it “after two phone conversations with Furrier and some independent digging.” I actually thought that Mike was pretty fair in that initial post.

In any case, he says now that:

“I’ve kept most of my personal opinions about Podtech to myself so far. I haven’t for example, said that I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.”

Ouch. He also says that:

“I write stuff how I see it, which is not the same thing as what the companies involved necessarily want to see. Never confuse TechCrunch with your PR or marketing team.”

Game on. Should be a fun TechCrunch party tonight :-)

Update:

In a Twitter post this morning, Scoble says:

“I’m tired of fighting with people in public about it. We’ll have the ultimate laugh if we make PodTech profitable … I certainly have lots of opportunities and would have left long ago if things were dire.

We ARE going through turbulence, though … and nearly every startup I know has gone through changes in direction, unstatisfactory employees, strategies that don’t work out etc …

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. My show is doing very well, though, and I’m having a ball personally.”

Update 2:

Scoble just posted this to his Twitter, saying Gillmor told him Arrington was right “about everything.” Mike responded within minutes on Crunchnotes with this post:

The funny thing is that Robert and I were immediately laughing together at the TechCrunch party, just an hour or so after the big fight on Friday. He apologized. I apologized. Then we shot some video.