It's so interesting how the tech reporting world is changing so much.
Parr's departure is just yet another long chain of these events, but it also marks at how much money is being thrown around. It also shows how tech is growing up! And with its massive swelling, these cottage industries have also risen. Remember when MG Siegler was at VentureBeat? Now he invests.
So much volatility and yet it's also highly important. These big writer networks creates the content that fills a weather channel of sorts for us tech workers to figure out the lay of the land.
This was Seesmic's original idea, short video messages, threaded into conversations, but for the web. iPhones are more intuitive and useful. Though I find myself more enthralled with FaceTime and enjoying focusing for a period of time instead of spreading it in bursts.
Logitech's implementation of Google TV sucks a lot too. When first booting up I instantly get an update message and had to wait 45 minutes with the forced update right out of the box. Afterwards customizing, configuring, and using Google TV is a jumbled mess of unintuitive design.
And they charged $399 for the experience. I ordered an Apple TV from Amazon with 2 day shipping off my iPhone right then and there. Been a happy camper since.
Google's first few attempts at hardware is a mess. Hoping they keep tweaking and get the product mix right but then you can't just slap beta on hardware, charge, and expect the brand to not tarnish.
Tumblr has done this multiple times in the past, justified or not. Last year I picked up mediaite.tumblr.com and within 2 weeks it was taken from me and given back to Mediaite. Gawker got me to shutdown a feed-reblog tumblr.
I was never notified.
What Tubmlr fails to do is notifying their users of making drastic changes to account information. If giving them benefit of doubt I wager it's because they're a still a small team supporting a huge community. If blaming them then it's likely just them being arrogant and not giving a fuck.
I opt for the former but feel better about the latter.
The name escapes me right now but there was a YC company from way back when that was doing something similar, a feedback mechanism for restaurants and SMBs. Except they were going at it before iPhone explosion and opted to design their own custom software running on Nokia hardware. Anyone remember what happened to them?
Going through an exact same experience with launching a mobile product in time for SXSW.
And likewise I'm not the one that's in the frontlines coding, I'm merely facilitating. Even then when day in and day out all you see are Basecamp threads, Google Docs, mockups, copy, rejection emails, unanswered phone calls, crashes after crashes after crashes... it wears. Wears like a too tight body suit; turns out doubt attacks like a python would.
I take solace in the relinquished wisdom of men of higher caliber, fighting tougher battles, and understanding more of life:
This is consulting packaged as a product. But just because this product fit isn't right for you and your humblebrag doesn't mean the entire premise fails.
The right fit would be a burgeoning company hitting their stride but don't have enough cash to spend on maintenance and service until another 6-9 months. They would jump on this to get the proper process in place and start hiring.