One of the most common reactions to a TechCrunch* post in too many circles these days is instant attack mode. Tales of their unfair practices, shortsightedness and fanboy-ism. “All they do is write about the great new Twitter app,” the masses shout from rooftops, “and they slam my startup!” Hey, I should know, my startup has been on the business end of that slamming more than once and it sure as hell isn’t fun. It’s not uncommon to hear theory upon theory detailing the ways in which TechCrunch is at best immoral–everything from favoritism to paid coverage–and at worst downright malicious.

I think few people who pay attention to startups could argue that Foursquare is one of the most beloved web services today, and MG Siegler of TechCrunch is probably responsible for that in no small part. It’s in that light that I hope people remember this quote from today’s Paul Carr missive.

Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.

The point being that it’s very easy to see all that is vindictive and ignore mountains of evidence to the contrary if you’re even the least bit motivated to do so. About 6 months ago MG wrote a post asking whether TechCrunch was a kingmaker, to which I replied saying that they indeed were biased. But that is, as they say, a feature and not a bug. It seems to me that the ideas behind that post have really escalated since then, and I’m not really sure why.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that part of my job is to get the people at TechCrunch to write about my company, so mine is not an unbiased opinion in the least. Nevertheless, I don’t think any of this is unreasonable, unfair or inaccurate.

* TechCrunch here is really a wildcard for any tech blog, as fewer each day are immune from or deserving of this treatment.

Pretty simple idea I was thinking about on the bus today stemming from the broader idea that I’m really tired of unqualified opinions getting too much attention.

Anyone who’s anyone in the startup world can tell you to “launch early and often.” “Iterate!” they’ll say, and “your first version should suck!” These things may very well be spot on, although I’d guess like most free, generalized advice, they’re to be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, Apple, the shining star of the tech world, is praised (and this is putting it gently) for “never putting its logo on anything that isn’t perfect.” Many people will say that’s why it is the company it is–let’s ignore, for now, whether or not you think that’s a good thing. Obviously any startup would kill to turn out like Apple, but it’s interesting that these ideas so fundamentally clash.

Now, there are obviously structural differences in the markets and customer bases of seed stage startups and global supercompanies, I get that. But still, when do you stop fearlessly launching brave new ideas that may (should?) suck and start only releasing perfection whose names attain the status of proper nouns? More importantly, when does making a mistake on one side become more costly than the other?

People get freaked the hell out. They become defensive really quick.

It’s sort of become a game of chicken. It’s cool to say you want people to ask questions whenever they don’t understand something–the people that legitimately feel this way are exempt from this post–but way more often than anyone admits the asker doesn’t understand because the askee doesn’t either. Far too many conversations lately have gone like this…

Me: I don’t understand that, can you explain?
Someone: Ya know, something like xyz.
Me: I still don’t know what you mean. Can you give me an example?
Someone: [completely ignores request for example and uses the term "ya know" again]
Me: [slaps self in head]

The real frustrating thing here is that this only happens because people are lazy and try to give instructions without understanding the task themselves. This, of course, is a waste of time. Most often, you will get back a shitty (or maybe mediocre) product that isn’t really what you wanted. If you’re lucky, you’ll get asked enough questions to make it clear that whatever you were hoping would happen is a waste of time–if you’re really lucky, this will take less time than would have otherwise been wasted. Some of the time you’ll get back the same shitty product as in the first case, but you’ll still have through so little about what you actually wanted that you don’t realize it sucks. In this case you’re blissfully ignorant. Many would consider this the best possible outcome.

I can’t stand the phrase “do(ing) email.” It drives me borderline nuts (for admittedly no good reason).

It occurred to me tonight, while waiting impatiently at Fedex, that lots of communications tools use awful verbiage–actually, awful verbage, if only that was a word, since the offending terms are nearly always verbs.

“Do email.” “Make calls.” Ick!

One that seems to avoid the train wreck is IM’s, where we “chat.” Oh, maybe if we get the noun out of the sentence we can make some headway.

When we search we “Google.” Everyone likes that!

Of course we can “email,” or “call,” but I think those have already been spoiled (1) because of tradition (2) because they’re somewhat uniquely communications mediums that people try to pass off as real time commitments. “Can’t talk right now. I’m doing email.” Oh, sounds official.

I want someone to come along and introduce the “Google” (v.) of email. I don’t care so much about phone calls–I’m already brainwashed to not really mind when people “make” calls–but if you want to fix that one too, be my guest.

First, social media gurus/ninjas/consultants/etc are full of shit. I am not going to profess to be one.

One of the most common nuggets of crap I hear when people talk about using social media–especially companies using social media–is that you have to use every aspect of the service possible or you might as well not using it at all. This is retarded.

There’s nothing divinely right about any given service’s design that means that you need to use every feature they offer. If you run a corporate blog, you should probably enable comments, although not necessarily. It’s probably a good idea to have a blogroll or some kind of link group, but it’s not a game breaker if you don’t. It doesn’t really matter much if you install and wizbang plugin, but most of them won’t hurt. There’s nothing plutonic about any of these things though. Certainly none of them are worth investing in simply because the software you chose to use allows them.

On Twitter, it’s probably a good idea to reply to follow other users, but it’s plenty easy to get lots of value out of the service without doing that. There are even more proof points of this than you’d think, because many of the accounts that “follow” lots of users don’t actually follow anyone, in that they don’t pay attention to the incoming streams. That’s fine if that’s your strategy. It’s not what I’d recommend, in an ideal world, but who cares?

There’s nothing wrong with only using select features of a social media service just like there’s nothing wrong with only using select features of your word processor–except tables, for the love of God please use tables if you’re laying out anything that is remotely grid-like.

If Twitter (or WordPress or Digg or whatever) removes a feature tomorrow, were the people using it idiots or the people avoiding it geniuses? Nope.

Being hurried and being busy.

For some reason these two (totally different) things have become irrevocably associated. It bugs me to no end and not just for reasons of etymology.

I love excel, but people with a lesser passion for it seem to be confused about what excel is and isn’t. Excel isn’t:

-A relational database
-A calendar
-Meant to display all the data from your hard drive horizontally on one screen
-Word with graph paper
-Meant to be copied into a powerpoint

Does this exist?

For instance, you have some even like a wedding going on. Lots of people are traveling and the guest list is big enough that there’s a good chance you don’t know or can’t think of everyone you’ve met that’s going.

If the host uploads the guest list somewhere I’d like to be able to see which members I’m friends with on Facebook or have in my Outlook contacts (or whatever). Then once I’ve found my relevant subset, pull in other data like where we all live from Facebook, when we’re traveling and staying from Tripit, etc. Then it could intelligently suggest activities like sharing a cab from the airport.

The high friction point is obviously getting the source of the list, but so much of that is done via Facebook, evite or some other system that has (1) very broad reach (2) naturally unique identifiers (3) a pretty good idea of who I know.

If this exists I guess I’ve missed it. If it doesn’t, then I hope someone makes it.

I remember in elementary school once we did a whole bunch of excercises in estimation. One that sticks out is beingaskes to open a closed dictionary to a particular letter section. I thought these were really stupid, but now realize that people are often horrible at common sense things that come down to reasonable (or totally unreasonable) estimation.

I doubt that more time flipping through dictionaries would have helped much, but I’ve never thought schools put enough emphasis on basic common sense. Maybe this would be a good happy median for the educators among us.

This is a really good post that is awfully autobiographical for something I didn’t write.

I’d read several books on self-publishing and writing non-fiction, and I could have a really good conversation about them, but I’d synthesized the information for knowledge-sake, rather than to act on it. That made a big difference.

That line alone was pretty interesting to read. I’ve felt that way at a lot of points in my life–knowing a lot about something but being virtually clueless when trying to actually do it.

I do question the inherentness of the “consumer” and “producer” characteristics, but the post is informative and interesting nonetheless.