Tech startups, exclusivity and our competitors (some thoughts)
What do Quora, Path.io & now SnapGroups have in common? They are 3
HUGE startup stories *ignored* by TechCrunch, AllThingsD and Mashable
after RWW broke them. I can't think of any reason other than that
RWW broke them that those blogs wouldn't cover the next project
of Facebook's first CTO and Mark Zuckerberg's high school friend Adam
D'Angelo (Quora) after several of those blogs covered his leaving
Facebook. Or Path.io, a company started up by Dave Morin, lead dude
at the Facebook Platform, and Napster founder Sean Fanning. Several
of those blogs covered Morin's departure from Facebook. SnapGroups?
Created by the guy who sold Yahoo Groups to Yahoo for $400 million and
then Bloglines to Ask.com for millions as well. You don't think
that's a story that these other blogs would be interested in? Why
would they not tell their readers about these projects? It can't be
that they are at various degrees of being unlaunched, leading tech
blogs love being in the know about high profile projects before they are launched. Could it be that ReadWriteWeb broke the stories of
Quora (our coverage), Path.io (here)
and SnapGroups?
A Google search of AllThingsD archives (nothing), TechCrunch archives (one passing mention of Quora, a few tweets from other
blogs syndicating coverage elsewhere) and Mashable archives (zip)
shows nothing.
preserving the illusion that they are the source of all knowledge
about the tech industry than in sharing with their readers important
and interesting news even if they have to mention a competitor's
scoop. Not everyone works like this. Gigaom, Lifehacker and The Next Web
don't. Here's another example: Rapportive is an awesome service
that The Next Web wrote about last week, then I wrote about it, then
Lifehacker wrote about how RWW and The Next Web wrote about it. Our
coverage got mentions because we added value through some otherwise
undiscussed details, like security concerns, etc. If the people at
other tech blogs haven't installed it, they are missing out (I bet
they have). They can't assume their readers already know about it due
to our coverage, because they are bigger than us. My working
conclusion is that they are willing to sacrifice their readers' best
interests in order to maintain that position of being bigger. The logical end result is that startups will actively avoid us and
resent us for breaking stories if it precludes their getting any
coverage at all in bigger media outlets. So by acting contrary to the
interests of startups and readers, these other blogs put us in an
antagonistic relationship with the startups. That's what I worry
about. I have a lot of respect for many people who work at these
three media outlets, I just don't like the way they are handling
exclusivity and startup coverage. Thoughts?
