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The article linked in the Mixlr blog post (http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thecaucus/2013/11/18/another-website-another-problem-for-obama/ http://mobile.nytimes
by rexreed 13y ago
The article linked in the Mixlr blog post (http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thecaucus/2013/11/18/another-website-another-problem-for-obama/ http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thecaucus/2013/11/18/another...) seems to tell a different story. From the NYT's perspective, it seems that a significant number of people had problems even hearing the audio stream. The way the NYT article is written implies that many of the listeners, rather than the 0.1% claimed by Mixlr, experienced problems. And it wasn't due to trolls, but rather the basic problem of people not even being able to hear the audio.
I don't see what the incentive for NYT to overstate or mischaracterize things, unless just to cast Obama further into a negative light, so I'm tempted to believe what the press says over what a self-motivated startup CEO would write. The NYT article makes no references to trolls, but rather what seems to be valid claims from would-be listeners that they can't access the audio stream.
If the audio problems were truly experienced by the insignificant minority, and a small number of trolls caused the majority of problems, then why was the article written in the NYT as if the glitches were the primary story, rather than the content of the broadcast (which is not even covered in the NYT article). The truth is somewhere between the NYT article and Mixlr blog post, but most likely weighted more to NYT's side.
I think Mixlr should thank their lucky stars that the blame was placed on OFA and not on them. In fact, I would be thankful the Mixlr name didn't even appear in the article. Had they not written the blog post, no one would have associated the event with their service. Having the president use their service serves as a good reference, but this one teleconference would not be what I would consider to be a positive testimonial.
- jmilloy 13y agoWell, I wouldn't discount the bias in the New York Times; they have every incentive to maintain ongoing controversy. Also, notice that it's a NYT blog, which I take less seriously than a news article.
- bradleyland 13y agoI don't think this can be understated. The media have a voracious appetite for controversy, because 24-hour news cycle. I agree with the parent poster that the truth probably lies somewhere in between, but like you, I don't think we can give NYT much extra credit here. I'm also surprised to see that more technologists aren't empathetic to the "tens of thousands of end users" matter. In a group of people over 100,000, we can begin to expect a fairly sizable number of users who have configuration issues that would cause their own host of problems. I'm not indemnifying Mixlr, but it's worth keeping in mind when finding the middle ground about what really happened.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> The media have a voracious appetite for controversy, because 2-hour news cycle. I think you mean "...because advertising".
- BrandonMarc 13y ago> I don't see what the incentive for NYT to overstate or mischaracterize things, unless just to cast Obama further into a negative light Perhaps the NYT blogger's editorial goal is to counteract the blame aimed at OFA / Obama by pointing it at Mixlr instead.
- rexreed 13y agoThe NYT blog doesn't once mention Mixlr and instead refers constantly to this being something offered by OFA... so the reverse of what you state here.
- codingdave 13y agoThe article linked tells the exact same story, as far as I can tell. "Many" people could not connect, and were vocal about it. There were no numbers in the article, and 7 people quoted as having issues. Lets assume that there were 100x that many failures, that would be 700 who failed, and 139,300 who could hear, which matches Mixlr's description fairly accurately. They had a large event that went well overall, but the problems that did occur caused a bit of a stir. Frankly, I have never heard of these guys before, but they earned my respect via their post because they did accept their own accountability for the issues. They are not passing the buck, they acknowledged that there were problems, and they intend to do better next time. That is absolutely the correct attitude.