Here's something you most likely missed: Blogger Xiaxue and Gushcloud co-founder Althea Lim appeared on 938Live radio on Jan. 7, 2015 to have a little chat.

The 38-minute segment called "Need To Know: Influencers: Should Your Company Engage Them?", hosted by Daphne Lim, has been uploaded on Soundcloud (no relation to Gushcloud):

If you don't have the time to sit through it, we can break it down for you: Basically, the host did not have to break up any fights. No cussing. No outright accusations. Okay, just some.

But there was quite a bit of poking.

From the segment, to cut a long story short, Gushcloud's Althea's case is conceived to be pretty straightforward: Singapore's online advertising industry is not as regulated as those overseas and there is no hard and fast rule to indicate when social media influencers are concealing the fact their posts are ads. And Gushcloud will be trying to use technology to make the presentation of statistics to clients more transparent.

Xiaxue, on her part throughout the segment, repeated accusations made in her original blog post that kick-started the whole affair and made references to cheating.

Here are the juicy bits:

Xiaxue repeats accusations from exposé blog post, accuses Gushcloud of lying (8min 43sec).

"No, no, no, I absolutely agree with her (referring to Althea), I do. I mean there are certain ways to let it be known that it is actually a sponsored product or you're getting paid for it. And people try to make it less in your face and I agree that's okay. You get what I mean, because sometimes it's obvious?

What about the part I said influencers are completely just lying. What about that? When you say 'I found this product by myself', is it acceptable? I don't think it is."

*Host Daphne tries to say something. Things get a bit testy. Althea cuts in.*

Althea (9min 13sec):

"I think this comes to a specific case example, which is one of our influencers... erm, I mean this first case example was actually created by Wendy herself whereby she created the SGPrivateTrainers, whereby we asked one of the influencers under us called Kay Kay to put up like an ad banner at the bottom and then got another influencer to say she chanced upon that particular ad banner.

But I think the point of the matter is that when we spoke with the latter, the other influencer who posted it up, I mean, if she has seen the ad, I mean, maybe she should not have put it word for word that she has stumbled upon, but she has looked at the ad, she has looked at the website.

Xiaxue (10min 02sec):

"She's just playing with words here."

*Deejay cuts in.*

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Althea is put on the defensive to explain Gushcloud's inner workings and why Xiaxue's accusations might be wrong (15min 24sec).

"With regards to the interpretation of the metrics and stats. On our end, we continue to provide our clients with Google Analytics. We do use bitly tracking as well. Sometimes they might not be as accurate, that's why we always point our clients back to Google Analytics.

Our future actions is to also create a technology platform whereby our clients can also log in to see how their campaign is doing in terms of their metrics they are using, in terms of engagement of awareness.

At the same time we've also started to talk to big metrics partners like Social Bakers to see if we can implement that as a tool.

I think one of the most important part of how this incident came about was because the click tracker Wendy put on one of our Gushcloud's influencer's blogs stated that the numbers were very low comparatively to her Google Analytics.

So what we did was to spoke to a couple of programmers on this and this was what was told to us by them.

Firstly, the time frame was only a month. That's not enough time to give full data, or from previous experiences there are down months as well.

Secondly, there could be all sorts of reasons why the code could be inaccurate. For example, like where the code is placed, how often it fires an advert impression, whether it shows only to specific geographical locations.

If, for example, a user were to skim past an ad without the code loading in time, it misses the code view count as well.

So there are multiple reasons why a tracking code might not be as reliable as we think it is, that's why we always choose to point our clients back to Google Analytics, because with regards to that we cut through all forms of standards."

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But Xiaxue sticks it in and gives the knife a twist. The word "cheating" appears (19min 45sec).

"I think it is very, very irresponsible to the clients to give outdated stats and I think that's a clever way of cheating in that sense, and making an excuse for it. Once upon a time, I was so popular so now I'm going to demand you pay me this kind of money. And if you can update your Instagram stats your Twitter stats according to what is the most recent number, then I don't believe you cannot your Google Analytics

And as a result right if clients find out that... Look, if I'm going to buy a banner ad from you and you tell me I'm going to get 10,000 hits on that banner ad in a month. And if I don't get it I believe the client should be entitled to at least a partial refund."

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Towards the end of the segment, Althea admits that clients have pulled out of influencer spending and Nuffnang would have faced the same situation (30min 54sec).

"So, the unfortunate case is that, yes, some of the more high profile clients who have been spending for the last year with us or with Nuffnang have decided to put influencer on hold, till maybe quarter two or quarter three of this year. And that is really an unfortunate case that something like that had, to be honest, blown out of proportion, has actually dampened the industry as a whole.

But I guess the good news is that the majority of our clients, I believe even on Nuffnang's side still be working with us. They are definitely cautious, they have asked us for more reports, more transparency of numbers we have provided so we've started to give them access to Google Analytics.

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Xiaxue rebuts that no advertiser has pulled out and she has no knowledge that advertisers pulled out of Nuffnang (32min 26sec).

"First I would like to address the thing that Althea was saying that Nuffnang has less sales and our clients pulling out. I've asked them and they've said that it didn't happen so I'm don't know if there's any truth to what she said. But definitely, personally for myself, none of my clients have pulled out and in fact I think they're actually happy about this going on because they can now be a little bit more clear about the correct numbers to look at and stuff like that.

And to answer your question about more ad interest. I don't believe having controversies will always influence your career positively."

Note: This conversation was not just based on two parties, of course. On hand to explain some stuff on air was a "social media specialist", Marcus Ho of Social Metric.

Have a listen to the segment yourself. The tension isn't half as bad as it reads here but it is obvious both sides still don't see eye to eye.

Will this be the last time we hear from both sides?

I'm betting against that.

Related articles:

Top blogger Xiaxue sets tongues wagging with Gushcloud exposé

5 mistakes Gushcloud made right after Xiaxue went to war with them

8 unlucky names in top local blogger Xiaxue’s burn book

Blogger ad network Gushcloud has come out to refute Xiaxue’s claims

Someone leaked Gushcloud’s WhatsApp group chat showing conversations after Xiaxue went to war with them

Blogger Xiaxue may not be right in her approach but her actions are right for local online advertising

Online vigilante SMRT Ltd (Feedback) is planning an exposé on blogger Xiaxue

Step aside Xiaxue and Gushcloud, PM Lee Hsien Loong is the real top social media influencer

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