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This is bad for startups (although we don't have any evidence yet that TechCrunch is intending to break all startup embargoes). Part of a successful launch is

This is bad for startups (although we don't have any evidence yet that TechCrunch is intending to break all startup embargoes). Part of a successful launch is getting the news out to several outlets -- you hit one particular reader on TechCrunch, a different one VentureBeat, etc. And by hitting multiple news sources, a single reader is much more likely to remember your story when presented with it multiple times. Also, startups tend to have very specific launch cycles -- you are most likely scrambling to get everything out the door, and might not have a working product launched before 4-5am the night before. Sending users to an non-functional site not only gives them a bad impression of your service, but massively detracts from the benefit of the news coverage in the first place. Without an embargo, it's more or less impossible to coordinate coverage from multiple sources -- once a story has "broken", other sources don't want to cover it. There's the problem of journalists breaking embargoes, and we've had that happen to us in the past with lame excuses like "I thought it was EST instead of PST" when it was clear otherwise -- we don't talk to those journalists anymore. If people were a bit more stringent enforcing that, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. An industry-wide no embargo policy doesn't seem to be in the reader's interests (as others have pointed out) -- an embargo leaves time for the journalist to get properly acquainted with the product, ask questions, and formulate their own opinion. It also enables multiple news sources to post about the topic, from different points of view. It's certainly not in the startup's best interest. But it is in TechCrunch's best interest: by not following any embargoes, they are forcing companies to aggregate their news around the highest-value source, which, having the highest tech blog readership, would be TechCrunch.

alex_c 17y ago
I tend to agree. Arrington asserts that "This is a good thing for readers", but doesn't back that up with anything. In the comments someone made a point very similar to yours, but Arrington's response isn't particularly coherent: counterpoint – they write the news on their own blog with lots of videos and other information for press to digest and then write their own stories. it works. and it’s not like the bias in their blog posts isn’t there in the pre-briefing anyway.
- drusenko 17y ago
  That would work well for the press, but poorly for startups. Reason being: press is like raising money -- you have to get a lot of excitement to get the best coverage. Putting the news out on your blog fails on multiple points: - No deadlines, so there's no urgency for the press to pick up your story (vs one that's more urgent). No urgency in practice means your story will not be written about. - Cat's out of the bag. It's much less exciting to re-print news than to break it, and news that's exciting gets first priority. - This makes it old news. Similar to the last point -- why cover it if it's already been covered?
robryan 17y ago
I guess you would just have a new of tech news people and spam the news out to everyone at the same time. With any luck enough of them will invest enough time in it before they would have decided it was a waste of time. If anything the embargo setup was probably stopping stories being written after people didn't trust it to stick.
camccann 17y ago
I agree that this seems to mostly be serving TechCrunch's own interests. However, is it really plausible for it to work any other way, in the end? Building plans around the voluntary cooperation of a bunch of people who would gain at least short-term benefit by defecting, combined with the "not getting the genie back in the bottle" nature of public information, is going to be an unstable equilibrium at best. All it takes are one or two influental people who are willing to take the social reputation hit from not playing along to bring the whole thing down. If not TechCrunch, someone else eventually. Lamentable, yet likely inevitable.
- Retric 17y ago
  If TechCruch is always going to defect then leaving them out of the loop is probably a good idea. They are worth less publicity than the non defectors combined so telling them is a bad idea. I think TechCruch has been slowly failing for a while, and this is going to hurt them more than you might think.
- Retric 17y ago
  If TechCruch is always going to defect then leaving them out of the loop is probably a good idea. They are worth less publicity than the non defectors combined so telling them is a bad idea. I think TechCruch has been slowly becoming less relevant for a while, and this is a larger risk than you might think. Still they want to become CNN, or at least make that much profit, and that means they have to leave their niche behind.
skolor 17y ago
Basically, its just the Prisoners Dilema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma), with fairly large impact on outside sources based on the decision. It seems to look like: TechCrunch Breaks Embargo: Good for them: Spike to traffic. Bad for competitors: lose lots of traffic, everyone already saw it. Bad for entity putting out embargo: it was there for a reason, whatever it was. (?) for users: Unknown how this plays out for the user. It depends largely on the quality of TechCrunch's reporting versus other sites'. TechCrunch does not break Embargo, another site does: Bad for TechCrunch: they get the downplayed traffic, but will still get a good chunk of it due to their size. Good for site that broke embargo: They get the spike, and walk off with a huge traffic spike. Bad for the rest of the competitors: they're still in the same case as everyone else. (?) for users, still. No one breaks embargo: Business as usual for TechCrunch: Apparently they have the largest tech readership. They keep that when it comes to new stuff. Business as usual for the other sites. They get the same traffic proportion as usual, possibly modified if anyone has a particularly interesting take on the product. Good for the user: they get all the views at once, and get to make their own decision. As far as I can tell, no embargoes fits with the last one fairly well, except the coverage will be spotty and the user loses out, because only sites currently staffed at the time the product comes out will be able to post about it, and they'll be rushing out as many updates as possible to grab traffic.

alex_c 17y ago

I tend to agree. Arrington asserts that "This is a good thing for readers", but doesn't back that up with anything. In the comments someone made a point very similar to yours, but Arrington's response isn't particularly coherent: counterpoint – they write the news on their own blog with lots of videos and other information for press to digest and then write their own stories. it works. and it’s not like the bias in their blog posts isn’t there in the pre-briefing anyway.

drusenko 17y ago
That would work well for the press, but poorly for startups. Reason being: press is like raising money -- you have to get a lot of excitement to get the best coverage. Putting the news out on your blog fails on multiple points: - No deadlines, so there's no urgency for the press to pick up your story (vs one that's more urgent). No urgency in practice means your story will not be written about. - Cat's out of the bag. It's much less exciting to re-print news than to break it, and news that's exciting gets first priority. - This makes it old news. Similar to the last point -- why cover it if it's already been covered?

robryan 17y ago

I guess you would just have a new of tech news people and spam the news out to everyone at the same time. With any luck enough of them will invest enough time in it before they would have decided it was a waste of time. If anything the embargo setup was probably stopping stories being written after people didn't trust it to stick.

camccann 17y ago

I agree that this seems to mostly be serving TechCrunch's own interests. However, is it really plausible for it to work any other way, in the end? Building plans around the voluntary cooperation of a bunch of people who would gain at least short-term benefit by defecting, combined with the "not getting the genie back in the bottle" nature of public information, is going to be an unstable equilibrium at best. All it takes are one or two influental people who are willing to take the social reputation hit from not playing along to bring the whole thing down. If not TechCrunch, someone else eventually. Lamentable, yet likely inevitable.

Retric 17y ago
If TechCruch is always going to defect then leaving them out of the loop is probably a good idea. They are worth less publicity than the non defectors combined so telling them is a bad idea. I think TechCruch has been slowly failing for a while, and this is going to hurt them more than you might think.
Retric 17y ago
If TechCruch is always going to defect then leaving them out of the loop is probably a good idea. They are worth less publicity than the non defectors combined so telling them is a bad idea. I think TechCruch has been slowly becoming less relevant for a while, and this is a larger risk than you might think. Still they want to become CNN, or at least make that much profit, and that means they have to leave their niche behind.

skolor 17y ago

Basically, its just the Prisoners Dilema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma), with fairly large impact on outside sources based on the decision. It seems to look like: TechCrunch Breaks Embargo: Good for them: Spike to traffic. Bad for competitors: lose lots of traffic, everyone already saw it. Bad for entity putting out embargo: it was there for a reason, whatever it was. (?) for users: Unknown how this plays out for the user. It depends largely on the quality of TechCrunch's reporting versus other sites'. TechCrunch does not break Embargo, another site does: Bad for TechCrunch: they get the downplayed traffic, but will still get a good chunk of it due to their size. Good for site that broke embargo: They get the spike, and walk off with a huge traffic spike. Bad for the rest of the competitors: they're still in the same case as everyone else. (?) for users, still. No one breaks embargo: Business as usual for TechCrunch: Apparently they have the largest tech readership. They keep that when it comes to new stuff. Business as usual for the other sites. They get the same traffic proportion as usual, possibly modified if anyone has a particularly interesting take on the product. Good for the user: they get all the views at once, and get to make their own decision. As far as I can tell, no embargoes fits with the last one fairly well, except the coverage will be spotty and the user loses out, because only sites currently staffed at the time the product comes out will be able to post about it, and they'll be rushing out as many updates as possible to grab traffic.