car boarding…

and http://www.heyjokes.com

have a nice day with you

If it’s a private Beta then do it behind closed doors and if it’s out in the public domain then clearly state it.

And then to go public rather than via a private email: PR mistake #1 - sort out issues privately.

And the funny thing is, is that once they go “live” they’ll be pitching you their story for …. guess what: some publicity and exposure.

I’d suggest such comapnies/start ups check out Amazon and buy a Public Relations Handbook.

Thanks for taking down the post. I really appreciate it (and sorry for the delayed response, I was offline for a few days).

I actually searched for your email on the site before posting but couldn’t find it? Could be me…

Anyway, I do appreciate you taking the post down for now and I really, really appreciate your kind words about the site.

Dave

http://www.johnlawrence.net/vi.....;type=post

1. someone sent me credentials for a website I had never heard of.

2. I went to the website, saw stuff, checked for terms of use (I’m a lawyer and always think like that), and saw that there were none.

3. I posted a very positive review.

4. I am involved in multiple private betas and have not posted a word about the companies, per founders’ requests

I do this every day. Most (all until now) companies are really happy about it. This person wasn’t. I took down part of the stuff he had an issue with.

Bottom line, if you put up a website with generic credentials you shouldn’t be angry when people go to the site and see what is there.

Nevertheless, yes, I know what it is like to be an entrepreneur and want to release things in stages.

In this case I don’t think what I did was wrong given the facts. In fact I don’t even think it was questionable.

And if Dave had sent me a private email (my email is all over the site) and simply asked me to take it down, I would have immediately. He didn’t. He made his comments public, and sort of accused me of something, and I responded.

And I wasn’t “eager” and this post didn’t exactly blow my traffic to the roof. Nor did I intend it to. I just wrote about a company that I liked, like I do every single day.

“If the company I’m writing about were *my* company and *I* wasn’t ready to announce and announcing might actually be harmful to my business in some way, then how would *I* feel about someone blogging about it?”

It’s one thing if you’re trying blow the whistle on some wrong-doing, but this is a little start-up trying to launch a modest product in a controlled way. As a sympathetic entrepreneur hoping to launch my own modest startup in the future, I think I’d rather have you not write about me than breaking a story at my expense.

I just notice the “Archimedes Ventures” website and it appears that only yesterday you put up Archimedes’ initial post about it. Knowing that you invest-in and consult-for startups, surely you understand the desire for a timed and planned “go to market strategy.”

No offense intended, this is just a simple difference of opinion.

I deleted the About text.

Keith, you’re right. Dave, I’m sorry.

The service is awesome by the way.

I’m not sure I told you off, though? Didn’t mean to anyway.

As I said in my first comment, I do appreciate your interest.

Sorry you’re unhappy that I just told thousands of people about your service. I wasn’t invited to the beta, I saw no requests on the site not to post/blog/etc., and so I wrote a profile. I’ve never had the experience of a founder telling me off for writing about his site.

I am currently involved in a number of private betas (3), and am respecting the requests of the founders not to post. I understand that sometimes people want a little privacy while they work through things. In this case, none of that happened. There’s lots I didn’t do though…I didn’t post the login credentials that you are using for the site. I didn’t post screen shots of all of the pages. And in general I only pointed out the positive things about your service.

How about this - I promise never to write about you again?

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we asked folks not to blog about this until we had the kinks worked out. It didn’t seem like that much to ask to have a private beta (especially not to have our about section reprinted). And no one was “invited” - all one has to do is sign up at rollyo.com.

We have many bloggers involved and all have kindly managed to do us a solid by not sharing these details yet. I was really hoping we could keep it that way for a couple of weeks.

Again, I do appreciate you testing the service. Not as much as I’d appreciate you postponing this post though.

Dave