How a Startup Launch Was Ruined By Careless Blogger | Hacker News Reader

How a Startup Launch Was Ruined By Careless Blogger

techcrunch.com

24 pointsrelation29 comments

Is it really that important for sites like this to "be the first" or at least "at the same time" of other press releases? It was 12 hours, most of your readers probably didn't read about it yet, why not just post about it? I wouldn't have noticed you were 12 hours behind some other site. I wouldn't have cared if I did.

Is it just for their pride that they won't do it, so as not to look like a half-assed journalist in front of their peers, or is there a real concern here vis-a-vis the audience? I'm trying to think how "posting late" as opposed to not posting at all could in any way bring negative value to the audience, and I just can't come up with anything.

Feel free to enlighten me, but to my unexperienced mind this smells like ego-tripping.

> What can I say? Reporters are a prideful bunch. No one ever wants to follow someone else’s story.

So yeah, it is pretty much just ego-tripping. Disgusting how he admits he broke embargoes himself, that he recognizes it's just pride, how apologetic he is about it, and then still doesn't publish the story.

You're right: it's just egos

Is it just egos, or is there also an impact on SERP rankings and referral traffic?

Assuming, for discussion, that it still needed further editing rather than being ready to go.

Yeah, I read this sentence

> But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna follow someone’s story 12 hours after the fact.

And I was "what. the. actual. fuck.".

But you really only get one chance to launch to the world, and it’s a shame that it all got ruined by one careless little post.

Yeah, that's not the moral of this story at all. I think it's time for some of these "journalists" to do some serious soul-searching and introspection.

Hint: If it's actually news, you don't decline covering it just because you get scooped. Evidence: Did only the first media outlet to cover the invasion of Iraq, report on the invasion of Iraq? Substitute a nearly infinite number of other news stories for "the invasion of Iraq" for more evidence.

This is just a bunch of amateurs playing at being journalists and somehow commingling a pissing contest and a "my dick is bigger than yours" thing with what is, nominally, their job.

Am I the only one who reads this and thinks that it sounds like a merely pointless ritual of "Why, no, I couldn't possibly do that, the gods would be displeased" that ruined some poor startup's day? If you have a perfectly good story, why not just run it and to hell with that blogger?

On the theory that people's actions are more reliable indicators as to their internal state than their words, it appears that he, and many journalists, successfully execute commitment strategies in the service of maintaining their power and privilege.

Oh look another TechCrunch article about TechCrunch and how hard it is to be TechCrunch and by the way, some company.

> No one ever wants to follow someone else’s story.

Uh... then why do we see post after post droning on about the same BS days after the first one went up? It kind of sounds like he helped ruin the launch by refusing to be second (or fifth) to write about it. This guy kind of sounds like a twat.

So the author didn't want to post the original article on Lyft just because someone else beat them to it?

Oh, someone launched a competing product before me, let me just scrap my project even though it's already done and ready to launch.

No one really cares that you weren't the first person to cover the startup. If it was good content, people will read it.

A good way to cover Lyft without actually covering them. Not as good an an unborked embargo, though, because there are probably few people who might be interested in them that will get to the middle of the article and see the name.

On the other hand, if you are expecting a big press dump to make or break your company, you are in trouble to start with.

One of many reasons I hate reading TechCrunch. This is one of the most asinine, pity me, articles I've ever read: the story isn't about anything but why he's hurt, and must maintain his status at the top of the totem. To be honest, yes, I now can't dissociate this pitiful shilling from Lyft. He has done them a major disservice.

This is like... a sarcastic blow from the inside of tech journalism directed back at itself... right? I can't even believe so much was written on ridiculous self-serving inside baseball if the author actually believes his sentiment from the last paragraph - that people should really get to hear about this project and the amazing team behind it.

"Nah, instead people will just get to hear me whine about my own insecurity instead."

"No one ever wants to follow someone else's story" because these are just glorified press releases. If they believed in their own writing and ability to share something unique about their subject, they'd still release their version of the story.

Instead, we get this LiveJournal quality BS about other writers not playing by the rules, which justifies the author's own shitty behavior.

This article is so strange. What could have been a great place for a piece about the service is now a whiny rant about getting beat to the punch by an embargo breach, a leak; something that we deal with so often these days that there's enough evidence of graceful ways to handle it that this post shouldn't have had to have been made.

Opposite to what others are saying, this doesn't highlight Lyft to me. It highlights that if this is what I can come to expect from TechCrunch writers, then I don't care to visit it or "launch" through them. I would be pretty livid if a blogger decided to use my launch to get on his high horse about how he was too busy at other events to notice the breach [1].

Regardless of his evening plans, the other article would have come out. Regardless of his evening plans, the other article would have said the exact same things as his did. So what does that boil down to, that being a TechCrunch writer means you've got more of a right to that information than anyone else? Does that mean TechCrunch merely cares about being the blog equivalent of FIRST! rather than truly informative?

It's okay though, you got to slap an Exclusive on that linkbait title.

[1] Question: When I wrote for a tech/gaming blog, it was mandatory that we constantly made sure we looked at what other stories people had on the docket so that we didn't overlap them and so that if we found out any new information, we would alert them to it so they could add it before it was published. If the staff at TC loved this company so much and were so stoked to write on it, how did it take 12 hours on a 24 news cycle for someone to become aware of this breach? Could understand how that might happen on a smaller site, but surely a company like TC, that apparently needs these firsts to be relevant, should keep pretty constant tabs on the industry.

The implication of this article is that being covered by Techcrunch is somehow vital to the launch of a startup. It isn't; that's the bullshit Techcrunch wants everyone to believe.

I too like Zimride, but I'm flagging this article because it's linkbait.

It's used to kinda be that way, but you're right that they're just crudely attempting to rest on their laurels.

Seems awful that the author seems to really want to support a project he likes, a team he likes and something he feels is worthwhile, but won't because someone else scooped him .5 a day early. Honestly, are people really glued to their RSS feeds taking notice of which publication gets a story out first? I didn't read the other story, I dont even know what site posted it. Swallow the pride and help a company out.

After reading the article and the linked comments to it (on TC, not here) this seems like it is just some sort of public grade school level grudge-spat between GigaOM and Ryan Lawler.

Why are the press/bloggers who cover startups such big fucking whiny-bitch babies all the time? Are there any hidden sites/writers in this area that I'm missing? Because it seems virtually universal to me.

Why are the press/bloggers who cover startups such big fucking whiny-bitch babies all the time?

Because clickers reward that behavior with attention. Histrionic personality disorder (real or affected) is practically a qualification for 'building your brand' and sustaining hit-bringing emotional rants and ensuing feuds.

TechCrunch is kind of full of themselves, aren't they? If a startup doesn't succeed because of a 12 hour delay, it was probably never going to succeed anyway.

Not to mention, I highly doubt whether most readers give two flips about when a story is published or who published it first. If I read an article about a start-up that looks really cool somewhere, and I see another article about it somewhere else -- heck, I'll read that one too.

i miss the days when a reporter's job was to report.

Is this the "embargo" breaker? http://gigaom.com/2012/08/23/car-sharing-service-lyft-goes-p...

But in any case, this is not Watergate. I don't get why it's such a big deal to be the first to report on yet another startup product launch.

It's only a big deal to TechCrunch "writers."

As someone who spends a lot of time writing, I want to grab this writer by the lapels and shout at him. The entire article amounts to a confession that his authorship adds no value! If his unique voice, his writing skill, his experience, all the things that go into his authorship, are less important than the word Exclusive in the headline or the temporal positioning of the article, then he's a shitty writer. A press release is a commodity, its marginal value is very low. A good writer adds something to an account of facts that you cannot get elsewhere, and that's what makes their authorship valuable. For examples, see Seth Godin, who is absolutely stellar on this topic. This TechCrunch guy has revealed that he's just a stenographer, just a copyist. I have no sympathy for him. He needs to become a better writer - and that involves hard work, which he seems curiously averse to.

"But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna follow someone’s story 12 hours after the fact."

Please get over yourself.

What a window into the dark, hypocritical heart of corrupt scoop-for-warm-coverage journalism.

We have "Death to the Embargo" TechCrunch lamenting that someone else's 'careless' writing ruined their chance to spend a few leisurely days stewing on the details (and working off hangovers), but still have their share of an embargo-synchronized launch.

We have the corrosive quid-pro-quo of "we'll now only report if you can give us an extra new manufactured hook", as if "We all love the service, love what these guys are doing" wasn't enough, and the writer has no unique perspective to offer on a still spanking-new service.

We have the launch of a "really cool" startup that, simply because of a little other coverage, no longer rates for any straight-up coverage -- but is still great fodder for a meta, naval-gazing pride-stroking inside-journalism lament.

We have the hyperbolic assessment that the launch was 'ruined' when in fact, for the startup the "big problem it faces right now is that it just can’t keep up with demand". Will anyone remember this TC-vs-GigaOm pissing-match sideshow by next Tuesday, when the launch news was 'officially' supposed to hit, and when traditional media sources outside the TC bubble pick up the story?

Sounds to me like the tech reporting industry is in serious need of disruption.

Probably, but doing so is a bit thorny.

A major contributor to the problem is that the primary revenue model tends to be advertising. Ergo, behavior tends to drift towards whatever gets the most hits.

Say you decide to attack this by running a subscription-only model. This has been done, sometimes quite successfully. But from the perspective of the startups which are trying to generate publicity, a subscription model means fewer eyeballs.

What would get more eyeballs? Well, you could offer the content for free, then make revenue via advertising - and we're back to the current state of things.

Any ideas?

Anyone else remember Arrington saying he'd break every embargo? http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ Ironic.

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