Gushcloud explores legal options against blogger Xiaxuay

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Gushcloud explores legal options against blogger Xiaxue

Wed, Dec 24 2014

The company, which manages social media influencers, took issue with allegations that it inflated earnings, and faked social statistics. It said these are "inaccurate" and "calculated to disparage" and injure its reputation.



Singapore blogger Wendy Cheng. (Photo: Han Wei Chou)

SINGAPORE: Social media marketing agency Gushcloud said it is taking legal advice over a post by blogger Wendy Cheng, known online as Xiaxue.

"Ms Cheng's allegations are inaccurate. We think that the blog post was calculated to disparage and injure our reputation," the Singapore startup said in a statement posted on Instagram on Tuesday (Dec 23), along with the hashtag #FaithInGushcloud.

In a lengthy post uploaded on Tuesday morning titled "The Big Gushcloud Expose", Ms Cheng said Gushcloud had inflated its earnings in a newspaper article and she also raised questions about its financial reports.

She also said the company had asked bloggers or social media influencers in its stable to mask advertisements as normal posts, and alleged that they faked blogger statistics and YouTube views

Ms Cheng, who is signed on to Gushcloud rival Nuffnang, wrote in her post: "You have every reason to think I have an ulterior motive for writing this - an unflattering blog entry about a rival company who promotes rival bloggers taking a share of the online advertising pie."

"However I hope you believe I only wrote this because I believe lies and immoral practices should be exposed, not for my personal monetary benefit," she added.

Ms Cheng said she had been waiting for more than a year to gather evidence, and had even created a fake company with a website for her investigation.

Without giving details, Gushcloud said the timing of Ms Cheng's blog post "speaks for itself". The company said it reserves all rights against her in relation to the post.

Supporters of Ms Cheng responded to Gushcloud's post with the hashtag #FaithInXiaxue.

Ms Cheng describes herself as Asia Pacific's top blogger, with an average of 40,000 views on her blog daily.

GUSHCLOUD RELEASES OFFICIAL RESPONSE

In an official response uploaded online on Wednesday, Gushcloud co-founder and CEO Mr Vincent Ha said Ms Cheng's "allegations are not true".

He said in 2012, one of his employees spoke to the media about earnings whilst he was away, and "this was mistakenly construed to be S$170,000 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)," he said.

On the issue of masking advertisements, Mr Ha said that Gushcloud does not dictate disclosure requirements to its bloggers "because the law does not require it in Singapore".

He also pointed out that Ms Cheng is a stakeholder in competitor Nuffnang. "There are many areas in which we can agree to disagree on because this is the nature of competition. But let’s look at ways in which we compete on providing the best service to our influencers and our clients instead of dragging each other through mud," he said.

Ms Cheng had stated in her post on Gushcloud that she owns a "very small amount" of shares when she first joined Nuffnang. "However, I don't get dividends. I don't get any say in how the company is run," she wrote.

- CNA/ly/dl





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