Gushcloud explores legal options against blogger Xiaxue

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 today (Dec 23), along with the hashtag #FaithInGushcloud.

In a lengthy post uploaded this 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. CHANNEL NEWSASIA