I apologize to everyone I’ve let down over the last couple of months. Here’s an example of the type of email I get every day (this one is actually quite polite).
Michael,
I just wanted to reach out to you as 2005 wraps up. I’d like to ask a question that hope you’ll take at face value (no attitude intended whatsoever). I follow your blog on a regular basis. In my opinion, you have covered a number of things that are less developed or innovative than XXX, yet in one way or another similar enough to make me ask, why have you never shown any interest in what we’re doing? Is there something about XXX that you don’t like?
I sometimes wonder whether you would view us differently if we had put a “beta” tag on what we’re doing. But i chose not to do that because i really believe that it should be understood that everything new on the web is in beta and that we, like all companies, are always working with our members to improve our offering.
Most importantly, i just wanted to let you know that we’re working real hard to continue making XXX better. I hope you will continue to be open-minded about reviewing it.
We’re set to release some major changes to our firefox extension and our web site in the first half of january. I’d be happy to share them with you in advance if you’re interested.
In any event, i wish you a happy new year and continued success in 2006.
Best,
XXX
XXX
President and CEO
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
Eh, if the product sucks or isn’t intersting to me, I don’t blog about it either. Irritating.
Matt
Mike,
as a reader of TechCrunch for half it’s lifetime (yes, 3 whole months!) and Crunchnotes since the very beginning I just want to say - you can’t do everything. Some people will get that, some won’t. My only request to you is not to feel you have to be comprehensive in a given area just because you’ve covered it. For example, Ajax desktops… I don’t see the need for more coverage here unless you see something really gamechanging. In other words, just because you’ve started to cover the space, I don’t think you need to cover every single Ajax desktop that’s released.
Matt,
that CEO is doing PRECISELY what he or she should do - continue to reach out to influencers that can helpo their company be successful. It’s easy to be dismissive when you don’t know the facts. Maybe the product or service rocks - we’ve gotta trust Mike to make the determination on whether he feels it’s something his audience would like to read.
Rick:
I just read your comment after finishing another ajax home page profile. funny.
Ah yes, the perils of being a journalist. You know them all too well now, Mike.
Mike ,
We trust your judgment and that is why we continue to pull your feed into our aggregators and often come back to the site to comment on certain issues.
Tagworld would be a good example of a site you missed. It was well established before you reviewed them and probably only had a small effect on their user base compared to sites such as Wink.
These folks who want you to put pen to paper for them via an e-mail to you should know to include the $5,000.00 cash. At least some people actually have had the guts to offer you cash for a review and others would rather whinge to you in an e-mail and complain that you are not ‘sharing the football with the other kiddies’ should go home and cry to their Mommies.
The folks that complain via e-mail should be blogging about their own information and share it with their current user base in an open discussion. I think the current users of a service would be fairly dark if you knew the features before they did and they are the so called beta testers. An updated Firefox extension does not sound anything like a brand new web start-up that is expecting to be treated as if they are brand new and only about to turn on the internet with an amazing new service. If your new Firefox extension was so great your own users should know about it. They then in turn will brag about it. It will then multiply as it goes to del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, Wink and MyWeb2.0. Mike would undoubtedly end up with a few messages in his inbox from readers asking for a review on a site. If a CEO does this that is fine in helping the marketing of his company, it does not entitle him for an opinion from Techcrunch, this is Mike’s decision. If on the other hand Mike is getting 10 e-mails a day from users asking for his opinion on a web site or service and he does not post one then that could be a different situation he puts himself in.
Songbird is a great example of openness by what they blog about. They don’t have a product yet and there are not many secrets about the product because they are telling us everything and showing us how to hack it. Songbird will do well because this is a company that I doubt could be much more open without giving out the details of everyone’s personal salary package and mother’s maiden name.
Keep going just the way you are Mike, you are doing a great job.
Mike, of course your taste in selection is what makes this blog. And not every tiny use of AJAX or use of Rails makes an interesting web 2.0 case.
On the other hand, your tagline
“TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to *obsessively* profiling and reviewing new web 2.0 products and companies.”
(emphasize mine) sets some expectations to comprehensiveness. I assume that this irritated the guy you quote. It might be helpful to well-meaning CEOs and to the signal-to-noise ratio of your inbox if you could explain a little what qualities beyond “new” and “web 2.0″ you are looking for.
I would suggest to add link category to companies that are not yet reviewed. Doing so will put expose them but will have no evaluation yet. once you review, or decide not to review, the company you can remove the link.
Just a suggestion.
Not specifically to your blog, in general I guess that a new web project is interesting if it shows a creative effort or fills a known vacuum.
I am not thinking about revolutionary stuff, just projects which introduce at least 1 new idea (or maybe mix 2 existing ideas).
Oh my, another CEO who thinks the media is obliged to cover his or her company. What else is new?
I’m guessing the CEO’s intials are EG.
“I just read your comment after finishing another ajax home page profile. funny.”
Nooooooo!
“I just want to say - you can’t do everything. Some people will get that, some won’t. My only request to you is not to feel you have to be comprehensive in a given area just because you’ve covered it.” - exactly my words too.
There is nothing wrong with the letter. In fact I find it very straightfoward, focused with a little pressure which is what a tech CEO suppose to do if they want to get their product/service out there. I wish I did write that letter
Might as well end the speculation…i’m eric goldstein the co-founder of Clipmrks and i sent Mike that email. I sent it for a couple of reasons, both of which i hopefully expressed clearly in the email.
First, i’d love Mike to cover Clipmarks. What founder of a tech company wouldn’t? I won’t even bore you with that one as it speaks for itself.
The second reason i sent Mike the email was to hopefully hear Mike’s thoughts on Clipmarks. He knows a lot more than i do about all of the “web 2.0″ companies and technologies out there. To get his insight and opinion about Clipmarks and why he hasn’t yet reviewed it would be very helpful information for us to have. He certainly doesn’t owe that to us, but i don’t see any harm, and meant no offense, in asking.
I (like many of you i’m sure) wrestle with the meaning of this whole “web 2.0″ concept. To understand Mike Arrington’s opinion about how Clipmarks fits in with that movement would mean a lot to me.
We have been diligently working on some meaningful upgrades to our web site and firefox extension. I’m excited about them and certainly would love Mike’s opinion and coverage. For what it’s worth, that update will be delayed by about a week or so as our lead developer (derek) and his wife gave birth to twin boys today. So that Derek can focus all his attention on his family without stress or concern about wrapping up some final details, we decided to temporarily postpone the release. Hopefully you’ll hear about it soon from Mike if he decides to review it
eric,
I’m out here grinding like you. Feel free to contact me at my blog to knowledge share.
My parents taught me when you run out of options, starting making options. It’s a new world in tech media. The paradigm of ego-inflated tech writers making/breaking tech business, deciding whose ‘worthy’ has changed with the advent of blogs and self-empowered consumers. You have to move beyond hoping someone give you a plug to promote your product/service. Good luck with your venture.
Eric,
For what its worth I think your site is neat and has great functionality. The UI could use some imporvement.
Thanks Ed and Yosef! Regarding the UI of the site, some major changes coming with the next upload…fingers are crossed that it will be some time next week.
Eric, Interesting that you told everyone it was your email. Like I said, you are much more polite than most of the people I haven’t written about yet.
Clipmarks is on a list of about 20 companies that I want to write about. When a company starts to get a lot of press, they usually get pushed down the list because it is no longer “news” and I’m not in a hurry to write about it. Clipmarks certainly has been written about a lot lately. Also, sometimes something pops up that is not only somewhat interesting, but a very quick writeup as well. Eric, that’s why you see things on TC that you think aren’t as interesting as your company. Its timing and ease of post.
I am looking forward to writing about your new release. Please let me know how it compares/contrasts to kaboodle, too. It will help the process.
Thanks Mike. Happy to compare/contrast Clipmarks to Kaboodle but i’ll do that privately via email and then let you decide if/how you’d like to compare the two publicly.
Hi Mike,
I see a few web 2.0 companies that are reviewed initially while in beta but then aren’t once they are launched (one of them being our site). Is there something that causes a site to lose its “worthiness”?
Thanks, shaz.
Mike, a little while ago you already raised the issue of getting flooded with email request .. that post lead to a pretty good discussion in the comment section which I think is relevant here.
How can you “obsessively profile” most web 2.0 products and be selective at the same time? Perhaps by using a combo of the brand you developed, the contribution of your readership and your own editorial talent:
- Divide Techcrunch into two “sections” (two blogs, or a blog and a wiki .. whatever)
- Level 1 is open, entrepreneurs like Eric get to write up their own products. Yes, this would impact the overall quality … but this would be more of a “directory”
- Readers use a digg-like mechanism to vote on what’s really important
- You still independently decide what to write about the other , “Level 2″ blog, but also have an automated mechanism to support the selection / filtering process: pick the most “digged” subjects.
In other words this “level 2″ would be the current Techcrunch, the open input / digging would satisfy the ever-growing crowd
Oh, so much talk about now trendy “beta tag”. Just got this from my wife today via ICQ:
“Why this products is beta? Cuz it’s beta than nothing”
Sorry, could not resist…
Mike, i hope you received my email with the info you asked for.
eric