Tag Archives: Yahoo

2008 called, and it wants its PR pitches back

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The other week, I engaged in a futile exercise to avoid having to pay for extra storage in my Google Apps account by getting a few years’ worth of old pitches out of my PR folder. It would have been a quick process if I’d just dragged those thousands of e-mails off the server and into a local folder, but I had to glance over them first to see if I’d filed any important interviews there by mistake… and so went many hours stumbling down memory lane.

2008 calendar closeupBeyond my surprise at how many PR pros can still stand to deal with me (thanks for the continued tolerance, Jesus, Brooke, and Steve), I was also amused to see the PR pitches I’d blown off or misunderstood in just one year, 2008.

For instance, what if I’d known then that I actually would make this app my external brain?

Writing with a company called Evernote— not sure if you are familiar with them, but they have a fascinating story around how consumers can capture their memories in a completely unique and innovative way. The company has already been seeing a lot of buzz around their Web beta and we’re excited to finally be opening the product to the general public. Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin, will be in DC June 4-6 and I wanted to see if you’d be interested in taking a meeting with him to get an introduction to Evernote and how it can become a user’s external brain?

I ignored the following because, I sniffed at the time, I don’t cover accessories. Look, anybody can ignore a story that becomes a $3 billion acquisition!

Monster, the leader in audio/video accessories, along with legendary artist and producer Dr. Dre and Interscope Geffen A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine have teamed up to develop a brand new level of headphones, Beats ™ by Dr. Dre ™. The headphones were created to reproduce the full spectrum of sound that musical artists and producers hear in professional recording studios.

I actually did review the gadget offered in the following pitch. But I passed on the CEO interview, and my writeup spent too much time whining about the slow speeds of broadband and the limited availability of streaming movies (even if that remains an annoyance).

Good Morning Rob:

We’re happy to introduce The Netflix Player By Roku.

Please let me know if you would like additional information, JPEGS of the product or would like to speak with Anthony Wood, founder and CEO.

And then there were all the pitches I got for Yahoo sites and services, even after setting aside all the announcements and commentary about Microsoft’s unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo. Maybe I should have paid more attention to them?

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More questions answered about my role at Yahoo Tech

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LAS VEGAS–My involvement with the new Yahoo Tech site hasn’t been a secret since the holiday preview posted in December, but with yesterday’s launch at Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s CES keynote it’s a lot more public. Following, answers to some of the questions I’ve gotten since then.

Yahoo Tech languageQ. Is this your new job?

A. No. Writing a weekly “The Rules of Tech” column is my new freelance gig. I will continue to have the pleasure of making four large estimated-tax payments to the IRS a year.

Q. What about your other work?

A. My assignment at Yahoo is to cover tech policy (not just laws and regulations, but the boundaries and limits set by corporations and each other). So don’t expect to see me getting into that area of technology elsewhere–that’s why I had to bid farewell to my tech-policy blogging at the Disruptive Competition Project.

But outside of that, I can continue to write elsewhere. Further, I should continue to write elsewhere–staying current with people’s tech frustrations in my USA Today column and reviewing gadgets elsewhere will make me a more informed tech-policy writer. That outside work can also let me indulge my wonkier instincts instead of plunging into the weeds in every single Yahoo post.

I may, however, have a little less bandwidth in the near term for other assignments as I work my way from “conscious incompetence” to “conscious competence” in this new role.

Q. Where are the comments? Why no RSS feed?

A. Shocking but true: Sometimes sites launch without every intended feature. I’m told those things are coming, so please keep clicking refresh at least once a day.

Q. Are they hiring? Taking on other freelancers?

A. Too soon to say, and those questions are also kind of above my pay grade. I can say that it’s been a busy few weeks; right now, I think we’re all dreading the fact that we only have [checks watch] maybe another hour to sit and admire our handiwork before getting back to it.

Q. Are you worried about being associated with a Web property that’s made so many technological missteps in the past?

A. That’s not a very nice way to talk about the Washington Post. (I kid, I kid! Just judge me by my work, okay?)

Yahoo.

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When I saw the surprising news that longtime New York Times personal-tech columnist David Pogue was leaving the paper to head up a tech-news site at Yahoo, I figured the next details I’d see about his new venture would come on my one-time rival’s Twitter feed–or maybe at Jim Romenesko’s journalism-news site.

Yahoo Tech logoInstead, I heard about it from Pogue himself when he asked if I’d be interested in joining this operation. A few weeks of e-mails and phone calls later, you can now see my byline atop a lengthy guide to Facebook’s privacy and security settings at Yahoo Tech’s holiday guide–a preview of what will open in January.

I’ll be writing a weekly column about tech policy in all its forms. By that we mean not just the laws and regulations enacted in Washington, but the terms and conditions that companies enforce on their customers and each other–as well as the norms we come up with on our own.

I’ll be doing this on a freelance contract basis, not as an employee, so you can still find me at USA Today’s site on weekends (now with an extra disclosure sentence when I need to critique one of Yahoo’s consumer services). I’ll also continue writing for most of my other current outlets if they can continue to put up with me.

One, however, will get unfortunately squeezed out: my year-old gig blogging about tech-policy issues at the Disruptive Competition Project. I’ve really enjoyed the chance to unpack issues like the smartphone subsidies, retransmission fights and e-book DRM, but I would be bonkers not to take a chance on writing about them before an immensely larger audience.

At Yahoo Tech, the CMS seems non-toxic, we should have a lot of latitude to experiment with different kinds of reader interactivity, and I’ll be writing alongside some talented people (including my friend Dan Tynan). And Yahoo as a company is not only putting serious resources into getting “original voices” on its site but looks a lot less lost at the plate. Letting its subscription to the CEO of the Month Club lapse in favor of giving Marissa Mayer the job seems a good call.

Finally, after having competed with Pogue for so long, it should be fun to cooperate with him. David’s long been an astute judge of user interfaces and user experiences (I’m still kicking myself for not thinking to start a campaign to end useless voicemail instructions), he’s willing to wade into comment threads whether they’re supportive or not, and he’s a legitimate showman who has literally made tech coverage sing.

I just hope this new gig doesn’t require any singing from me.