Earlier this week, Shaun Deswberry released a post slating the listener/viewer statistics that had been released by NetDynamix, the company that streams the Ballz Visual Radio and 2Oceansvibe Radio online stations.He backed this up with a lot of reasonably sounding technical detail so it was surprising that NetDynamix immediately went on the offensive and said they were going to sue Dewberry, if he didn’t take down his post within 6 hours.
According to other IT social media players, NetDynamix then changed its Windows Media player and old Flash player to a new Flash player pointing to a Flash Media server. What is even more bizarre is that the previous Windows Media player, which worked well when MyBroadband used it, is now replaced with the new Flash player. Ballz visual radio therefore has two Flash players, but no Windows Media player.
NetDynamix disputed some of these findings however, cached copies from Google showed that the changes had been made. The changes by NetDynamix could arguably have been made to alter the method through which statistics are collected. It may have been coincidental, but the timing is very suspicious.
I won’t get into the nitty gritty here however Roelf Diedericks, a respected local IT specialist has backed up Dewberry’s findings. What is also of interest is that the claimed statistics from NetDynamix would put these 2 radio stations amongst the 10 top worldwide stations – highly unlikely but NetDynamix have said their methods for stats collection is different than other companies.
This morning though, NetDynamix has said that they will not take legal action against Dewberry. Dewberry said that he does not feel that his allegations have been suitably proven wrong to compel him to apologise and revoke them, and he did not remove his post. Instead Dewberry pointed out that NetDynamix was making changes to its network and streaming applets, possibly as part of a cover up.
NetDynamix have been advised that any legal action against Dewberry would probably not be a good thing. This is proof that Dewberry’s claims were most likely correct all along.
It’s quite sad that companies resort to legal action when it would be far better to sit around a table and sort things out. NetDynamix comes off looking very bad from what can only be described as a debacle.
UPDATE: I took a look at Darren Scott’s interview with Shaun Dewberry on BallzVisual Radio and it’s shocking how badly Scott comes across like an ignorant bully. I’ve never been a fan of Scott but this just nails it for me. And it looks like I’m not the only one – not a single comment for this youtube video has something positive to say about Scott.