I hear you and you make some really good points, I think it is a matter of perspective or rather, some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate. Perhaps crunchnotes may have been a better venue…..I personally didn’t find the post childish or unprofessional, more of a heads up about another company that is asking for attention from him. Either way, I clearly have too much time on my hands today! I don’t think holding a product, person, or company responsible for its performance is any way unprofessional or childish. At worst, I consider it to be politically incorrect, but then again, I’m all for being politically incorrect. I think at the end of any day, honest and raw truth trumps all. If my product sucks, I want to know because I’m going to learn and do what it takes to make it better, plain and simple. I don’t want people being nice for the sake of being nice because when you lose honest feedback you lose an opportunity to improve. Arrington simply passed along the pitch as he felt he received it and as we all know when somebody can’t execute their pitch well it is often a harbinger of things to come……Some people think it was unprofessional while others don’t take issue, this is to be expected. I, in fact, take issue with a company that doesn’t take a major pitch to a company a company like TechCrunch seriously enough to execute it during business hours with care that it is done correctly, but pawns it off on a “PR” person to dish out carelessly after their 11:00 PM workout… but that is just me….I still refuse to believe that the response by Maura was legit though, seriously that was weak and I feel bad for them if that was their best effort….. Would loved to have seen this company step up and shut us all up… but again, a no show. Sooooo, ultimately they must take responsiblity for their unwillingness or inability to address such issues in a timely or professional manner……

You are correct in that Michael owns Techcrunch so he does have the right to do as he wishes in his “sandbox”. I just didn’t expect that to include being unprofessional. As others pointed out, this post seemed better suited to crunchnotes.

Plus, Techcrunch does in fact want to be taken seriously, it’s an advocate of the “new media” which it includes itself in, it’s been incorporated, hosts conferences, and it has employees, etc. You don’t expect the founder of such an entity to make such childish entries on his company’s flagship blog.

Crunchnotes is the sandbox, Techcrunch is not. At least thats how I view it and why I find the post so childish.

Point taken. I think the term media outlet is a bit vague though as TechCrunch isn’t a traditional “media outlet” consisting of a large corporate structure with many writers contributing to the body of work as a whole. TechCrunch is essentially the online personification of Arrington and as such he has the ability and (if he wants to maintain the readership he has built) the responsibility to make calls about companies and products as he sees fit, plain and simple.

I don’t really need the context of what transpired, I don’t care if there is a personal grudge involved or if Mike was having a bad day, or whatever the case may be, this is his sandbox, period.

At the end of the day this is a net win for the company as they will get traffic, so even though their pitch to Arrington sucked, their product doesn’t load in IE, and they don’t have enough of a clue to defend themselves in this forum, they come out ahead and we chalk up one for mediocrity of the worst kind. There are hundreds of companies that would pay thousands of dollars and send their CEO to Arrington’s doorstep to shed tears (haha) to get ANY kind of coverage on Tech Crunch, yet this company completely looks a gifthorse in the mouth and nobody of notable stature from within the company sees this forum as being worthy enough to respond to on…. where are the real uncov guys when you need them… maybe they would title this post… “The Losing Edge”…

The point is that every media outlet receives requests for media coverage, often even before the product is fully ready, or for products that will never deserve coverage. I’ve never seen any other media outlet react in such a way. Most others would just dismiss the company as not worth covering. It just sounds petty when you complain about a misspelled word.

Plus, you don’t really know the full context of what transpired. Maybe the company takes the definition of “beta” to be what it meant before Google changed its meaning. A “beta” implies that there will be bugs.

Also note even though Michael received the error message, the site was still useable with one more click. The “press here to continue” button allows the user to use the site with any browser even if supposedly incompatible.

This is how you own the situation and present your product in a professional and meaningful way to readers: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007...../#comments

Notice the CEO’s posts (11, 12, 18, and 36) and how she gracefully uses the platform to educate reader while learning from them at the same time… beautiful! No “PR Person” or other meaningless cop outs, she takes reader criticism that is bordering on Juvenile and owns it.

Having built a successful company and “things working out” does not automatically mean you are behaving in a professional manner.

Trace,

I found Maura’s explanation to be reasonable. She apologized for spelling Flickr incorrectly and mentioned the bug was fixed. Maybe she didn’t check out Techcrunch first thing in the morning because she may have been too busy dealing with MSM contacts, you know those big newspapers that Michael hates because they “steal” his stories… perhaps Maura was in a meeting with the New York Times (haha). After all Techcrunch is not the holy grail that you imagine it to be.

Or perhaps she did not expect Michael to be on his period and it did not occur to her that Michael would make such an inflammatory post so quickly after her submission.

Either way you have a lose, lose scenario for this company, which Mike’s article indicated, should not have been a surprise in the end because companies that want to be taken seriously do not make these kind of mistakes…. we all make mistakes, but we can’t afford to make mistakes in hgh profile situations as this..not to beat a dead horse but the follow through from this company was as to be expected and unlike any other company I’ve seen that has had mention here……even with the mistakes made, this could have been a wonderful opportunity for this company to set the record straight and they were a NO SHOW!!!

it’s unfortunate that the feedback Panraven is getting here isn’t related to their offering and business model but instead focuses on their spell-checking mistakes and site testing. the flickr mistake though is an eye sore for someone dealing in still image content and looking to take them on. but you live and learn and move on. good luck

Just my opinion.

And if Mike does overcriticize your website, use that criticism to improve your website, grow your userbase, and become your own success which you can then rub into his face.

Personally I would much rather get criticized and told how I can improve my product, than have someone do generic comment like “nice website, I like this feature” etc

I, for one, blame flickr — the poor PR person probably dutifully ran a spell checkr before they sent it ovr the wire.