

How a Startup Launch Was Ruined By Careless Blogger - relation
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/the-lyft-launch-that-coulda-been/

======
relix
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.

~~~
AznHisoka
You're right: it's just egos

~~~
grueful
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.

------
mindcrime
_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.

------
Eliezer
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?

~~~
patio11
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.

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

------
jack-r-abbit
> _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.

------
chauzer
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.

------
SoftwareMaven
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.

------
drone
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.

------
AgedashiTofu
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.

------
mnicole
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.

------
diego
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.

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

------
ZanderEarth32
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.

------
georgemcbay
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.

~~~
gojomo
_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.

------
Xcelerate
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.

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

------
smartician
Is this the "embargo" breaker? [http://gigaom.com/2012/08/23/car-sharing-
service-lyft-goes-p...](http://gigaom.com/2012/08/23/car-sharing-service-lyft-
goes-public-adds-android-app/)

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.

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

------
sedev
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.

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

Please get over yourself.

------
gojomo
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?

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

~~~
grueful
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?

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

