If you have news, don't brief bloggers or news people, write your own first-person blog post and put it on your corporate web site. Then when you're ready to tell the world, publish the post. That's when Mike and Marshall and Scoble will find out, along with everyone else. If they want to write about it, if they have something to add, great. If not, no big loss. No one needs 18 duplicate idiotic blog posts hanging on your announcement, or worse, hanging on the piece written by the asshole who broke the embargo. Embargoes are for ink-stained 20th century idiot loser throwbacks. - Dave Winer

Dave is doing a micro-embargo - directeur

directeur: that's funny! - Robert Scoble

Robert: He ended it! ;) - directeur

Dave: The problem is that some of the ones you cited won't write anything if they're not the first on it. No, I didn't meant Robert or Marshall. And that being said, I, for one, don't care at all about such a "loss" - directeur

I had to put that placeholder comment there while I wrote the bit cause of the way FriendFeed works. Otherwise someone else would have gotten the first comment and that would have spoiled the layout. So what do you think? Are embargoes for losers and crybabies? - Dave Winer

directeur: right. And that works for companies that care about Twitter, blog, Facebook, FriendFeed traffic. But what if you want to get onto Walt Mossberg's column in NYT? Then the game is different. Steve Jobs continually says "hell with bloggers" and gives out first iPhones to Mossberg and three other journalists. - Robert Scoble

directeur, so? Who cares? It doesn't matter. Why do I need 18 identical articles to tell the story? You think that makes the product more successful? I don't. I think it's a way for PR people to tell their clients they're doing them some good in a statistical way, but it doesn't translate into more happy users. Pretty sure of that. - Dave Winer

And by the way, they need to get over that. They should only write a piece when they have something to add. Regurgitating press releases *is* 20th Century journalism and is bullshit. - Dave Winer

Please note: I totally agree with Dave and have been asking people to just Twitter their press announcements first. Then I can retweet them, and blog them and whatever. - Robert Scoble

The real value is in the video anyway that I do after the news. Speaking of which, I have a fun video of Loic Le Meur giving Joi Ito a demo of Seesmic's new features. Be back in a few minutes with that. - Robert Scoble

Dave and Robert: Tou're both right! What I meant is that old copywriting principle: You won't create a need, you won't change the consummer. You create a product that satisfies a consummer's need. And if your product is really worth attention, no matter if Mike speaks about it or not, it'll be known and used, be it at least by word-of-mouth - directeur

my counterpoint is here: http://www.stagetwoconsulting.com/wordpre... - Jeremy Toeman

Will Mossberg's opinion mean much 3 years from now? How about 5? Who cares if he likes the iPhone or whatever new Apple product Apple is peddling. Many people see right through this crap. - Brett Nordquist

Exactly. I care much more if Brett Norquist likes it, because you're not a pompous airbag who's wined and dined by industry assholes and afraid that you might offend someone and not get invited to LeWeb or The Gillmor Gang or FOO Camp if you say the product is slow or buggy or pointless. We needed blogs because the press was too incestuous with the vendors and vice versa. So they recreated the system. BFD. It's still obsolete and a public nuisance. - Dave Winer

Dave: You've just nailed it! - directeur

Brett: many CEOs say that Mossberg isn't important to them anymore (Like.com's CEO even wrote a blog post saying that two years ago). In fact, a few CEOs tell me they got the most traffic to their pages from Twitter, not from any single blog. That's why I love Twitter and FriendFeed. No one is an "A lister" here. If I try getting out of control you just can leave me a comment saying I'm a pompous airbag who's wined and dined by industry assholes. - Robert Scoble

directeur, you should read some of the Davenets I wrote in 1994 and 1995 and again in 1998 and 1999 and in 2003. You'll see we're just popping the same bubble over and over. Great. - Dave Winer

Robert: Ha! You're right, but things are still to improve and you know what I mean ;) - directeur

@Brett - nobody cares about Mossberg or even much about his opinion - they care about putting the product in front of his audience. - Eddy Cole

Oh, by the way, today with Loic Le Meur I told him why I don't use Twhirl or Seesmic and how to get me back. I don't care if I get invited back to Le Web. And I made my own foocamp. Every day has been a foocamp in my life since getting kicked out of that four years ago. Funny enough I'm interviewing Tim O'Reilly on Friday. I might just tell him what I thought about getting kicked out. - Robert Scoble

There's hope for you yet Scoble. :-) - Dave Winer

Dave, and so was the case of an old greek philosopher :) - directeur

Oh, and Dave, I remember you showing me a few things and asking me not to blog about them until you had a chance to explain them first. So, even you have a use for embargos and NDAs. - Robert Scoble

Just say NO to dingleberries! - Mona Nomura

Robert, they're not the same IMHO. Was what I asked you an embargo? Don't think so... I just wanted an expert's opinion from a fellow ninja and some time :) - directeur

directeur: they are a member of the same family. I guess you didn't ask me to not talk until tomorrow at 9 a.m., but you asked me not to tell anyone about what you're doing until you had a chance to work on it more. I think that's very fair, by the way, and I agree to those kinds of things all the time. I'm rarely in the news business lately anyway. - Robert Scoble

Hey, we all break our own rules from time to time. That doesn't mean they aren't the RIGHT rules,right? :-) "Embargoes are for ink-stained 20th century idiot loser throwbacks." Here-here! What do PR firms do any more, but help you write that draft post if you don't have time or in-house resources and aggregate subscriptions to the 19th century newswires for slightly more affordable access? - michael silverton

We need a definition of embargo. I'm too tired to write one but it involves briefing more than one person to try to create a surge of orchestrated press. I might have told you about something I wanted to do as a form of kibitzing, but not for the purpose of getting you to write about it. I would much rather follow the formula I put out at the beginning of this thread. Then if you screw it up (sorry but you usually do) at least people can read the official explanation of what the thing actually is. - Dave Winer

Dave: that's because you never give me your own demo on video. That's what I usually do with new companies, so your point is incorrect. I would rather have a CEO explain what he's doing by showing it to me. Or, in the case of what Seesmic did today, showing it to someone else and letting me film (that'll be up in a few minutes). - Robert Scoble

I don't like doing videos. - Dave Winer

Dave, you read my mind. So many brands don't even have their own blogs. They could be doing exactly what TechCrunch is doing, to just as large an audience, with just their brand if they put some effort into it. - Jesse Stay

Dave: that's OK, I'll always be among the first to link to your new stuff however you like to explain it. - Robert Scoble

Jesse: I don't know about "just as large an audience." Potentially as large, yes. More targeted and probably relevant, yes. We humans still have this herd behavior where we tend to anoint tribal clue leaders and then tune out all the rest. Often strikes me as an evolutionary hurdle. - michael silverton

Dave: So maybe just add to your opening comment as optional step: create Viddler, Vimeo, BlipTV, BlogTV, Ustream, whatever; and make public at time of blog post. Seesmic stands alone for conversation; several others have great HD quality for one-time blasts. For additional video expertise: www.sukhjit.me and www.giannii.com among others. RS needs no introduction. :-) - michael silverton

My comment when I bookmarked this on delicious: If you think you need to control press coverage, what you actually need to do is come up with a good product. - Jordan Cole

As long as blogs keep moving more toward operating like MSM, then traditional things like embargos will exist for blogs as well as MSM. - Lynne d Johnson

I'm finding it more difficult to determine who is on the take and who isn't. If Mossberg writes about Netbooks I'm skeptical because I don't know if there's some sweet deal for Walt. Maybe there isn't but I trust Dave's take on Netbooks because he spends his own money on them. When I worked for Microsoft we sent high end laptops to editors (like PC Mag) to review products like Office. But they could keep the laptop. How many bad reviews do you think were written on those laptops? - Brett Nordquist

Stilist: Well said. - michael silverton

Brett: This doesn't get less ambiguous, moving forward, does it? :-) - michael silverton

Lynne: I think that was Dave's original point, no? Save as draft. Push live when ready. - michael silverton

I have some thoughts on this topic. If you're interested, just ping me so I can send you an NDA. Once you agree to it, I'm happy to offer some analysis. Thx. - Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin: Please consider this comment as signed NDA. Fire away. :-) - michael silverton

Sorry Michael. I mentioned my commentary to the kids at dinner in passing and it's all over Runescape now. I release you from said NDA. :) - Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin: Oh, gee golly, really? Darn. Well, ooo-kay, let me know if we at The Gullible Agency LLC can be of any future service and Have A Nice Day. ;-) - michael silverton