Social media marketing firm Gushcloud refutes blogger Xiaxue's accusations

Social media marketing firm Gushcloud refutes blogger Xiaxue's accusations

In the latest update on allegations of questionable practices by social media marketing company Gushcloud made by Singapore blogger Xiaxue, the company refutes key points made by the blogger in its own blog post.

Gushcloud's chief executive and co-founder Mr Vincent Ha put up his "official response" on his company's website's blog that rejects Xiaxue's, real name Ms Wendy Cheng, claims of inflated earnings and forcing its influencers to mask ads. He also offered statistics and figures of its bloggers to show that their pageview numbers were not exaggerated and there were no buying of YouTube views.

"In summary, we don’t buy YouTube views. We are here for the long-term and our reputation is precious to us", said the blog post.

However, at the start of the blog, Mr Ha does admit to making an "honest mistake" of inflated earnings in a 2012 newspaper report.

"In the midst of the turnaround, one of our employees spoke to the media about our earnings and this was mistakenly construed to be S$170k monthly. This was an honest mistake. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have come out and issued a clarification (I was not aware of the mistake then)," said Mr Ha in the blog post.

"In short, was a mistake made? Yes. Are we embarrassed? A little. Was our action tantamount to "inflating earnings"? No. Our conscience is clear", added the blog post.

The conclusion of the blog post reiterates his points and likens his mistake, if any, to human fault.

"What I do not appreciate is Wendy calling me and my team dishonest and saying the business is in trouble. These allegations are not true. If there’s anything to be guilty of, it’s that I’m human to a fault. I make mistakes like losing records, glancing over reports, not communicating often enough and perhaps doing the SMU jump awkwardly", said the blog post.

"Live and let live. Love and then love somemore", ended the blog post.

The Straits Times reported that Mr Ha told them that Gushcloud will not be pursuing the matter further. "It's the holiday season, and we have no intention of making this matter into more than it is," he said.

"At the end of the day, we just want to make peace."

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Earlier today, Gushcloud had considered legal actions against Ms Cheng over her blog post that carried allegations against the company's earnings, website page views and YouTube video views.

In the lengthy blog post titled The Big Gushcloud Expose and posted on Tuesday, Ms Cheng also accused Gushcloud of being unethical by asking bloggers to disguise sponsored ads as regular posts.

She wrote that she took more than a year to "slowly gather all the evidence I need".

Gushcloud said on its Facebook page on Tuesday evening that the allegations are inaccurate.

"We think that the blog post was calculated to disparage and injure our reputation. The timing of the release of the blog post also speaks for itself," the Facebook post read.

huizhen@sph.com.sg
spanaech@sph.com.sg

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