But this was just a basic feature that was apparently live for everyone (at least, everyone in the TC office). I was really only contacting them to see if they had an explanation as to why they'd want to implement this.
Sometimes I even read the terrible article before I complain about it's integrity.
I really wish these guys would show more integrity than me, and simply ignore the fact that I lap up whatever they post.
I in fact have not read the article (I refuse to waste my time/give TC a page view) because they represent crap and I want crap to wither and die.
Principals, some people try to live by them.
You're a more disciplined man than I, and it's good to know some people are making the effort to keep them honest.
You rarely get a downvote as a consumer, just like on HN. Going in to the comments to register your dislike is not the same as a down vote.
If a new facebook feature is reason enough to throw all reason and caution overboard then how can we ever trust anything TechCrunch writes to begin with.
Surely the world does not lose anything critical if you verify if what you see is not an anomaly but an actual released feature ?
No press release ? No statement on a blog somewhere ? No verification from FB ?
Run the presses, we've got a scoop!
It really does sound ridiculous, 24 minutes for 'something like this' makes it sound as though the appearance of a new feature in facebook is of earth shattering importance.
By falling for this prank you may have shot yourselves worse in the foot than you realize.
First you lost a bunch of respect about the Twitter documents, now you prove that you do not care about the accuracy of your stories as long as you get them out first.
TechCrunch depends on readers believing that what TechCrunch writes is true, and verifiably so.
I'll bet you the next feature that facebook launches will be thoroughly researched by you before you hit 'submit'.
Or did you not put some procedures in place after this fairly good example of a social engineering hack ?
Well, you have one datapoint more now than you did last week ;) Lets hope the counter gets stuck at '1'.
> I wasn't contacting them to verify if it was real — clearly they were rolling it out to people (though obviously on a very limited basis).
Yes, why bother verifying something that even the first couple of posters on your site immediately classified as a hoax ?
5:29 original post
5:37, all of 8 minutes later, Rob Abbott: please tell me this is a joke
5:39: bad april fools joke, Stephen Ausman
5:41: Matt Harwood: I call hoax
So, if you consider it bizarre enough to contact them, your readers point out that it is in all likelihood a hoax you still contradict them.
After all, it so completely makes sense for facebook to implement this, what with the popular demand for this feature and all. After all, every 'expert' in the industry is well aware of the rise of fax usage between the users of social networks.
Elsewhere you say that facebook usually responds very well, and that a response within 10 minutes isn't unusual.
So, in spite of them normally responding amazingly fast you did not have the courtesy to wait for their response ?
Must be hard to let go of a scoop.
I'm really happy that if it would have been damaging that you would have at least waited a little longer and that you would have tried to contact more people. But effectively that says: "If it would have been damaging then we would have run it regardless". Just 20 minutes and a couple of emails later maybe.
Class act.
Lighten up.
...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.
- come up with crazy ass feature - implement in the minimal possible way - enable feature for techcrunch network only - see if they write about it - check comments on techcrunch - response bad -> yank feature, nobody the wiser, response positive -> implement feature by pulling an all nighter.
I figure that pulling a TechCrunch will go down in to history as 'getting an online publication to write something terribly wrong to teach them a lesson about journalism and fact checking'.
Let's see how long it takes before someone else pulls a stunt like this on TC.
Hair trigger journalism.