4 ms·
Taking away his vanity url was, or should have been, a deliberate action. I cannot believe that there would be enough trademark complaints that someone doesn't
by bugs 17y ago
Taking away his vanity url was, or should have been, a deliberate action.
I cannot believe that there would be enough trademark complaints that someone doesn't check the persons name before taking away a vanity url and sending such a message.
And if techcrunch had not gotten involved I cannot see them giving the same response to any person.
- jacquesm 17y agoProps to them for responding this quickly though. Also, the apology actually sounds sincere. (follow up on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071623) It's amazing what a little media attention to your support issues will do. We should institutionalize that somehow. Like the public wall of shame of old, a vetting board decides if your issue gets pushed down the pipeline and all the news outlets subscribe to it. That could create some serious consumer power.
- ehsanul 17y agoWe should institutionalize that somehow. Like the public wall of shame of old, a vetting board decides if your issue gets pushed down the pipeline and all the news outlets subscribe to it. Or, one could run it something like how Stack Overflow is run, with a community voting on what issues are most deserving of attention, and helping to solve the issues and get the word out. Then the media could just skim the issues that were voted up the most from time to time, when they're having a slow news day.
- barrkel 17y agoInstitutionalizing this kind of attention would normalize it. It would remove its extra-ordinary nature, its very newsworthiness, thus diluting the effect.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think that depends on how you bring it. If you were to bundle the facebook complaints, the google complaints and so on then by virtue of the cumulative effect it would be newsworthy again. But you're right that 'making it normal' would detract from the newsworthiness, so you'd have to combat that by sheer volume.
- Tichy 17y ago"We should institutionalize that somehow." Everybody should have at least 10000 followers on Twitter.
- radu_floricica 17y agoDeliberate action, yes. But still motivated by trademark. They simply chose the path of least resistance. The faux-pas was actually made by Harman's PR person. If he had shut up everything would have gone smoothly.