Digital Content, Marketing and Disruptive Technology Consultancy
I’d be surprised if you’ve avoided mention of Techcrunch’s TC50, but if so, it’s one of the biggest conferences and events of the tech year, with startups able to pitch for a cash prize, investors, and the like’s of Kevin Rose in attendance.
Although the Techcrunch interview mainly focuses on Digg, they do ask whether or not starting Pownce was a mistake – skip to 7.26 if you just want the microblogging:
There’s a big reaction to Techcrunch at the moment, after they publicly stated they had received confidential Twitter documents sent to them by a hacker who had got access to Twitter bosses email accounts.
The arguments by Mike Arrington are that the information will appear anyway, that the unethical behaviour was by the hacker and not themselves, and previous articles by the Wall Street Journal and Gawker, along with Techcrunch.
And they’ve said they won’t post highly sensitive or personal data – simply the product notes and financial projections.
Interesting timing considering the current investigations into allegations of mobile phone hacking by the News of the World.
The question I’m thinking about are:
Whether it’s morally/legally right to say that a publication is absolved of an ethical decision because documents ‘land in our inbox’?
Does it matter whether you proactively obtain, or simply receive, information if the end result is the same publication of material?
And whether the financial projections and product notes of a private internet technology company could be judged to be ‘in the public interest‘ or not.
Really interested to hear some other opinions/knowledge of the legalities – all my notes/reference books are at home!
Two items appearing in my Google Reader subscriptions almost led to me exclaiming WTF? on a crowded Monday morning commuter train. (Post now updated due to more info – see below)
First up was the strange experience of seeing Michael Arrington and Techcrunch complain about someone posting a video of the Crunchpad which ‘was not a sanctioned or official video‘. And which has since been taken down. The video was of the CEO of Fusion Garage, who are partnering with Techcrunch on the Crunchpad, unboxing the last prototype.
Let me repeat. Techcrunch has complained and taken down video which was ‘not sanctioned or official’.
Techcrunch.
On the plus side, it’s relegated the Mike Arrington call to end handshakes to the second most bizarre thing I’ve read on Techcrunch.
On a more positive note, Techcrunch also revealed a major Microsoft marketing blunder.
If you download Internet Explorer 8 through this specific site, Microsoft pledged to donate 8 meals per download to a group called Feeding America.
As MG Siegler pointed out, there’s a slight problem. For each download, Microsoft pledged to donate $1.15 to a maximum of $1 million.
‘Only complete downloads of Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 through browserforthebetter.com from June 8, 2009 through August 8, 2009 qualify for the charitable donation to Feeding America®. Microsoft® is donating $1.15 per download to Feeding America® up to a maximum of $1,000,000. Meals are used for illustrative purposes only. Meal conversion is effective until June 30th, 2010.’
Which means that each ‘meal’ would be $0.14.
*update 1pm*
As revealed in the comments below, the figures for the cost of meals is actually directly from Feed America’s figures, so it’s incorrect to state that Microsoft set the cost of a meal at $0.14. Rather, it’s bloody impressive Feed America manage it!
I’d still argue that $1 million is a relatively small commitment comparative to the other marketing campaigns etc which Microsoft is running – and that the IE8/Feed America donation is definitely part of a marketing plan.
Oh, and for the record, I’m an MS fanboy if anything as a PC person over Macs, and an Xbox fanatic!
*end of update*
As MG has gone on to explain in an update, it’s a good thing that Microsoft has pledged money to a good cause – it’s just that $1 million is somewhat dwarfed by the $80 million that is being spent on Bing promotion – and linking it so tenously to the number eight is marketing gone mad.
You can imagine the meeting:
“Why don’t we do something with social responsibility – how about donating some money when someone downloads IE8?”
“Yeah, but how does that promote us? Where’s the brand? Hang on, why don’t we donate 8 meals per download, and that way it promotes IE8″
“That will cost us a lot, though”
“Yeah, but if we limit it to $1.15 in the fine print, noone will notice, and we’ll look like we’re as nice as that company who do no evil”
Lesson 1:
If you’re going to embrace the idea of social responsibility properly, it’s probably better to be honest and open about what you’re actually doing, and build on that goodwill, rather than trying desperately to tie it into your brand message and then looking like a bunch of cheapskates.
Lesson 2:
And as a journalist, I’m well aware of the need to offer companies a ‘right to reply’, and the benefits of going through official routes to fact check etc – but I’ve also lost count of the Techcrunch stories which get put out as quickly as possible, and then updated as facts are checked to ensure speed of information, and a fast placement on news aggregators.
If you’re going to live by the sword of fast tech blogging or social responsibility, then you also have to be willing to accept a few flesh wounds…
It’s a popular question today, after both Techcrunch and Mashable covered the launch of The New Platforms Fund, which will invest between $1000-$3000 in 10 ideas (plus human support), in exchange for a minor equity stake.
Techcrunch was pretty disparaging about the idea (headline: If you are really, really desperate for cash, these guys will give you $3k) Mashable’s take was a bit more open about the diea.
If you want to apply, the form is here.
But what is quite interesting is the debate in the TC comments around how much this could actually fund – obviously it’s not enough to pay for a team of developers for a year, but could it help 1 or 2-person start-ups just out of college to spend a month or two on one idea?
Or, given the current state of the economy and job market, could it be enough to make the mortgage payment for a month whilst you try something different? Or to get the services of a developer or designer for a week or two to make a simple concept into reality?
After all, Stocktwits got more funding after just two months.
But do you think $1-3k is enough to get something started? And is it worth giving up some equity in order to reach another round of funding?
