It is well known that they post on the blogs of critics under various names, posting lies, half-truths, and links to official Nirvanix propaganda organs.       So, shouldn’t be surprised that they’d stoop to this level.      They sent one of their official spokes-liars, Matthew Harvey over, he tried deleting and then turning the article into a hagiography.    Check out Harvey’s Wikipedia Sock Puppet Page.

 Read the editing logs of the Nirvanix entry.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:  

Evidence

• Mharvey23’s first edit blanked Nirvanix. I reverted it within 4 minutes only to have them revert my revert seconds later. Xxxsacheinxxx reverted the revert^2 a minute later.
• Mharvey23 was warned and then warned again.
• Suspected sock Yellowdude89 then appeared and ‘Blanked the page‘ (their own comment) 4 minutes later. This blank was immediately reverted by J.delanoy.
• Twenty minutes later Yellowdude89 nominated the article for deletion. At the time of writing however they had not created the article’s entry in AfD so it’s not clear whether we should undo this edit as vandalism.

Comments

• The puppetmaster Mharvey23 appears to be Nirvanix’s PR contact at JPR communications, Matthew Harvey. User was already warned about COI and 3RR.
• The only edits made by both puppetmaster and puppet are vandalism/blanking of the Nirvanix article.
• Nirvanix has motive to try to rewrite history (Streamload/MediaMax/TheLinkup death spiral dogs Nirvanix)
• Have requested checkuser for good measure.MediaMob (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

FOR SHAME, NIRVANIX!!!

Mediamax/Streamload/TheLinkup - deleted millions of users files.  Then, over the course of a year, they strung us along, saying the files were in the course of being recovered.

Were yours recovered?    I’d say about 1% - IF THAT - of mine were recovered.  Meanwhile, they claim the numbers were around 95%.   Did you get 95% of your files back?  If you did, I’d like to know!

They brought in someone new, Patrick Harr.  He realized, I guess, that MM/TLU/SL was a sinking ship, a public relations nightmare, beyond all hope.  But he had a plan.

The company,  behind the scenes, got a bunch of funding and created a NEW company.  Most of them employees went over to that company.  They abandoned the sinking ship, and all of the customers who were still missing files.

Now the Mediamax/Streamload/Linkup ship has finally sank to the ocean floor.  The new ship, Nirvanix, is doing quite well - millions of dollars in VC funding, and a brand new identity - untainted by their major screw-up under the old company name.

Seems all our files really are lost forever, and there will be no accountability.   Sure, there are some scapegoats - mainly Steve Iverson, I guess - who claims Nirvanix has threatened to sue him, who claims they are liars who wanted to shift all the blame.

And why wouldn’t Nirvanix want to do that?  They have a chance to have a clean slate, a whole new beginning.    If you ask most people about Nirvanix, they won’t be able to tell you how the whole thing started, about their history as a company who created such a nightmare for so many.

Imagine that:  Nirvanix is essentially the same company with the same employees that lost MILLIONS of files.   They were an online storage company who failed at the one reason they had for existing.  But they expect people to trust them again, just because they changed their name and got a new president?

The sad thing is - it seems to have worked.    I will still chime in when Nirvanix news bubbles up in the blogosphere or wherever, and still track the news when I can, but I don’t see what more can be done.    Nirvanix lost millions of files, lied, cheated, and stole, but it appears for now they have won.

This is groundbreaking stuff here.   Unfortunately it looks like Nirvanix is gonna get away with it because Iverson and MM/TLU are going bankrupt, and Nirvanix is figuratively swimming in venture capital which they can use to sue anyone who offends them.   For those unaware, Steve Iverson is the founder and president of Streamload, Mediamax, and The Linkup.  Nirvanix is a spin-off company of Mediamax.

STEVE IVERSON’S COMMENTS:

MediaMax has tried to avoid adding more fuel to our bad-PR fire because we do not have any new, useful information to add beyond what has been posted on our official blog, but I do feel it is now necessary to correct some new misinformation.

I’ll start now with a short clarification now, and will try and follow up in a couple days with more details.

First, I’m sorry if there has been false hope given that additional access will be made to customer files. This is simply not the case. Only the files that are currently in your account are the files that will be available for download through this Friday. I think Nirvanix is in panic-mode and is, not surprisingly, trying to divert all responsibility to MediaMax. There is nothing we can do. If any of this were possible we would not be closing our business.

Many of Nirvanix’s claims are not true. Given that we now have zero employees, no money, and are shutting down in 5 days, MediaMax is an easy target. Nirvanix also has millions of dollars to continue their PR campaign and has indirectly threatened John and I with personal lawsuits. If continuing this fight would bring back customer files or fix problems of the past, I would do so. But, at this point, there is nothing to gain and the major problems cannot be fixed. Answering questions or “telling our side of the story” is not going to provide any true benefit to anyone (get customer files back), and exposes me to significant personal liability. Right or wrong, this is America and they can sue anyone for anything, and John and I and trying to move on with life and find new jobs. Further, I think Nirvanix has learned that I may be going to work for one of their competitors, and they are doing their best to discredit me and the value that I bring to a competitor.

Regardless, to clarify Nirvanix’s most recent campaign of misinformation:

- As I stated above, the “MediaMax front-end” or database is not a solution to the problem. We do not have access to the files. Nirvanix knows this is our position. I could go on for hours about the technical problems involved and solutions attempted and place blame elsewhere, but at this point, it really doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Fundamentally, MediaMax is responsible because you are our customer, and the biggest mistake we made was to trust Nirvanix to manage our customer data - yes, it was on the “old Streamload system”, and not their new Nirvanix SDN, but I believe the care and attention that was required was not there and was beyond unprofessional.

- I am in communication with Nirvanix, and to state otherwise is patently wrong. In fact, I sent their CEO emails (and cc’d 3 other Nirvanix employees, including a direct report to Jonathan Buckley) on 7/21, 7/25, and 7/30 (Wed), and received a reply on 7/31 (Thursday) and another email from their CFO on 8/1 (Friday). After reading your blog post last night (Sunday), I emailed Jonathan Buckley and have now heard from him and their CFO again this morning (Monday). Jonathan has my contact info and he probably works with 15 people daily who also have my contact info if he had misplaced it.

- And irrelevant of solving customer problems, I will note that Nirvanix is actually not a creditor of MediaMax as Jonathan claimed as they have been paid in full for their services.

The popular thing for me to do would be to say “yes, all will be fine if Nirvanix can just get their act together” and divert attention back to them, but that’s not the case. It’s game over, and there is no new information since our last “official” TLU blog post. It’s not the popular statement, but it’s reality and it’s unfortunate for everyone involved.

Whatever, that’s not what this is about.  What this is about is someone is going around the net shilling for Nirvanix, using different names and IP addresses.  I realized they had shills but didn’t realize that I have proof of it on this very blog.

It started over on the Unofficial Nirvanix Users forum reported:

someone with the ip address of 68.15.28.125 and using the email address of jas@yahoo.com, who just happens to be in the San Diego area, is trying to get to get Nirvanix’s point of view across by getting blogger’s to publish his comment containing a link to the Nirvanix Blog about how we have written un-truths about the company.

This comment made me realize that I too had gotten SEVERAL comments on this very blog lately doing the same thing - containing a link to another website where the alleged “truth” was revealed - the truth being that Nirvanix bore no responsibility.   I didn’t put things together, but I checked the comment details today.

I received comments from 3 people:   Eric, Darren, and Nick.  They all had different user names and different IP addresses, but the SAME email address.

So if you have a blog, and someone has posted pro-Nirvanix comments, please go into your blog administration screen and find all of those suspicious patterns - different names under same IP address, different emails but same name, different name but same emails, etc.  If you find anything, please send it to me on my comment form at the top of the page, I will post it here.

WATCH OUT FOR THESE PEOPLE:

IP ADDRESSES: 
68.15.28.125
24.199.49.114
67.49.39.31

USERNAMES:
Nick
Eric
Darren

EMAILS: 
jas@yahoo.com
ecj1983@msn.com

Mediamax/Streamload/The Linkup is going out of business and filing bankruptcy.

Two former employees of Mediamax/Linkup/Streamload say that it was actually NIRVANIX who deleted all the customer files, and that Nirvanix may actually still have them.

Nirvanix denies responsibility.    I’m gonna add a lot of data to this time permitting.

1. The StreamLoad/MediaMax/theLinkUp corporate entity, ownership, management…everything are completely separate from the entity known as Nirvanix.

Patrick Harr is CEO of Nirvanix. He was formerly CEO of MediaMax.

Greg Bohdan is the CFO of Nirvanix. He was formerly CFO of MediaMax. He was also formerly CFO and is currently on the Board of Directors of the “San Diego Venture Group”, which FUNDED MediaMax.

Geoff Tudor was Senior Vice President of Products and Engineering at Streamload. He is now COO & VP of Engineering at Nirvanix.

Adrian Herrera was the Director of Business Development at Streamload. He is now the Director of Business Development at Nirvanix.

Steve Iverson is the current president of MediaMax, founder, and former CTO. He has admitted that Nirvanix is a spin-off company from MediaMax, and that the behind the scenes creation of Nirvanix BY MediaMax is part of the reason for the massive failures experienced by them.

* Nirvanix is located at 525 B St, San Diego, CA.
* MediaMax is located at 600 B St, San Diego, CA.

According to Google Maps, those locations are only 203 feet away from each other. However, if you search California corporate records, they’re both listed as 525 B St.

He (HARR) was CEO of Streamload for but two months before splitting off and founding Nirvanix.

Which again, IS a spin-off, uses SAME computers and personnel, etc. He was so successful in presiding over the failure that is Streamload/Mediamax/The Linkup, that he was rewarded a new job - president of sham spin-off?

The truth is - you wanted a fresh start, but the Mediamax/Streamload name was tainted. So you made a new company with a new name, but the same people, same servers, etc - that is INEXORABLY intertwined with the old one.

We’re not stupid. We know what you’re trying to pull.

3. Neither Streamload nor Nirvanix have any ownership in each other. They are different businesses in every way shape and form.

Except for ADMITTEDLY using the same servers, one being a so-called “client” of another, sharing personnel, and according to corporate records, even sharing the same address (525 B St., San Diego, CA 92101).

Nirvanix has raised $18M in venture capital from top firms including Intel Capital. The due diligence involved in this process alone is daunting. We can ensure you that we could not have made it through this process if even 5% of the terrible things that have been inferred about a “Nirvanix conspiracy” were correct.

Even the most horrible companies have raised venture capital - I offer as proof that Mediamax was able to do so, and look at the crapfest THEY turned out to be. Maybe Greg Bohdan, a guy who was on the BoD of the San Diego Venture group which funded Mediamax and who now works for Nirvanix, helped out?

There are now nearly 400 businesses built or in the process of launching with Nirvanix as their storage cloud supporting it, including Streamload.

I’m hoping those unsuspecting businesses will read this and abandon this sinking ship before it is too late. History repeats itself, everyone - and Nirvanix is doomed to repeat the mistakes of it’s previous incarnations - Streamload, Mediamax, et al.

For those on this thread that lost irreplaceable data, this is the worst-case scenario for you or anybody and certainly for a storage provider - free or not. Best practices would have you place multiple copies in multiple locations, even with a paid service advertising backup etc. This goes for the folks that are using a backup drive locally. Make sure you get a copy offsite.

So, basically - sorry we lost your data, but it is your own damn fault. You should back up your data offsite! Nevermind that many users were using Mediamax/Nirvanix/Streamload/The Linkup AS their offsite backup! Hey, wait - there is no “Sorry” in there at all, huh.

We lost your data, we’re not sorry about it, and it’s your own damn fault for trusting us - Jonathon Buckley

Guess who is on the list under “File Storage”???

That’s right - they’re recommending Mediamax - a site that doesn’t even exist anymore, and when it did exist it was TERRIBLE, as an “Excellent web-based tool”?

This is ridiculous. It kind of reminds me how, just a few months ago before the change to “The Linkup”, MediaMax was still using positive reviews they’d received from various online and offline magazines to promote themselves, like PC Magazine. Despite the fact that the service was nowhere NEAR as good as it was when they received those reviews.

Off topic - I actually wrote some of those who had given positive reviews and asked them what they thought of Mediamax STILL using their positive reviews after losing what must be terabytes of customer data FOREVER - but they all said that they didn’t revisit old reviews.

This Dutch blog is also recommending Mediamax - I went on and left some comments in Dutch setting him straight.   Unfortunately, he chose to delete them.

While researching, I’ve been finding a lot of posts originating in India lately.   Here are a couple.

• Desipundit:  Perils of Free Online Storage
• Visceral Observations:  Streamload/MediaMax/Linkup:  Cheats and Offenders on Web
• Needlessly Messianic:  MediaMax / Streamload Shuts Down!
• Short Stories:  Streamload/MediaMax/LinkUp - Don’t Trust Their Services

But we’re gonna put it up on Google Books, so it will show up in Google searches, and it’s gonna be available to purchase (a REAL book!) on Amazon.

If you have any horror stories about your experiences with these scammers, I have made a handy online form you can use to submit your experiences.    If you want to collaborate on this book (you WILL get co-author credit!) please remember to leave your email on this form!

 Click here for the form.

Click here for the survey.   Add your email if you want to take part in writing the book!