The Press Releases of the Damned

Harry writes "Once upon a time, Microsoft said that Windows Vista would transform life as we knew it. Palm said its Foleo was a breakthrough. Circuit City said firing its most experienced salespeople would save the company. And Apple said that Web apps were all that iPhone owners needed. I've collected the original press releases for these and other ill-fated tech announcements, and annotated them with the facts as they played out in the real world."

Comments

Not worth reading

[Anonymous Coward]

The stupid "article" is spread over 8 pages. Slashdot should have some standards for posted articles... and no, I'm not new here.

Re:Not worth reading

[Shakrai]

and no, I'm not new here.

Well obviously. "Anonymous Coward" has been here since the very beginning and has an even lower UID than CmdrTaco ;)

I'll save everybody the trouble and just link to the only one that's remotely interesting. The AOL-Time Warner merger. How'd that work out again? I stopped getting three AOL CDs/disks a week so they must have done something right ;)

Re:Not worth reading

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The AOL/Time Warner thing was a colossal fuckup; but I have to hand it to the guys on the AOL side.

AOL, purveyor of overpriced, under-performing dialup access and horrendous software to complete morons, managed to (just as it was becoming abundantly clear that dialup was doomed and that the internet at large was superior to the walled garden) convince Time Warner, a company with some actual hope, that they were worth an amazing amount of money.

Re:Not worth reading

[IPFreely]

If you are comparing AOL to the internet and modern ISPs, then you are completely correct.

The thing with AOL is that it was around *before* the internet and those other ISPs. AOL came around in the age of the BBS.
Everything was dial-up. Mail was tossed and copied around node to node. It was almost all local due to phone charges. What AOL did was make a national BBS, and put in local dial-up access points in most local calling areas. It was bigger than any other BBS of the time. It offered mail to any other AOL user, and mail bridges to most other networks (like compuserv). They had a GUI when everyone else was text based. You can't call them stupid for being the biggest provider in their market. Their problem was that the market changed.

When the internet finally did grow up, AOL was already big. The problem is that the internet changed the online equation. Access became commodity. AOL had to rely on content. (That's why the TW deal). But eventually, the internet had more content too. So AOL is a leftover giant.

I guess we could just expect them to rollover and die because they are outdated. But it's funny how many people don't want to do that, regardless of how outdated they are.

Ugh

[sheepweevil]

8 pages and no printer friendly version (that I can find)? This is why /.ers don't RTFA!

In defense of the Circuit City press release

[elrous0]

I used to write press releases myself in my younger days and often times you're stuck in a very difficult position of having to spin something that's very negative into something that at least doesn't make a bad situation even worse. Let's face it, there are only two reasons that companies ever lay off employees en mass: a budget cut that makes it unavoidable, or an attempt to streamline by removing an entire redundant or poorly-performing area or division. Private sector companies are loathe to admit the former, and so they almost always couch a large layoff as the latter.

They do this because they know that, if they show weakness, their stock will tank and they'll have even MORE layoffs than they've already had. And laying off people is never easy to do. Despite the reputation that corporations have for being heartless, they are nonetheless made up of real human beings--very few of whom take any pleasure in having to throw their employees' lives into chaos (not to mention the real damage it does to the company itself and its projects).

Of course, sometimes the stock still tanks anyway (savvy investors are rarely fulled by mere spin), but to publicly announce "Hey, we're going into the shitter" is still irresponsible. And the only alternative to "We're streamlining" or "We're facing cuts" is "We axed these people capriciously, just because we felt like it." So the choice is pretty clear.

Re:In defense of the Circuit City press release

[name_already_taken]

Why is it that in this day and age the movement of the market (and the whole underpinnings of the global economy) is based on things like the perception of how someone wrote a press release?

It's because investors and speculators are indeed crazy. People are sheep.

My parents told me a story of how my grandmother flagged them down as they were driving down the street one day. They pulled over and my grandmother came over to the car, looked around to make sure nobody would overhear the sage investment advice she was about to reveal, and said "pepper's going scarce".

There was a rumor amongst all the old ladies in town that there was a shortage of pepper, and so they were rushing out to the stores to buy all the pepper they could before it ran out. For a week or so, there was a real shortage of pepper in that city, because of all the old people rushing to buy it.

Compare that to what happens to the retail price of fossil fuels when something just as ridiculous happens, and you can see that the people who have influence over the price of things are just a collection of irrational sheep. Once you realize that, it becomes clear as to how you can influence markets and prices if you have some money to invest in the right place or if you can say the right words in front of enough people.

Re:It goes without saying...

[jollyreaper]

...that irrespective of the situation, press releases are never going to say "this sucks" or "this is completely unoriginal". A few of these are genuine oversights/lack of forward thinking (e.g. the iPhone app one) but the majority of them are standard marketing hyperbole that appears everywhere ("This cleaning product will TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE!").

Life boils down to a question of whether people are talkin' the straight shit or just a line of bullshit. Bullshit pays more but the straight shit lets you look yourself in the mirror.

The funny thing, people love the bullshit. They bullshit others, they bullshit themselves. It amazes me when someone does due diligence, get told something that's true but they don't like it. This big deal I'm salivating over, it's smarter to pass it up than get all my money tied up in it? Fuck you. What, you're saying my income can only support getting the fancy house and the car, not the house, the car, and the yacht? Fuck you twice-over, cocksucker.

You get some exec with a grandiose plan, something that's really going to make his name, cement his reputation, there's no way of telling him it's just not that good of an idea. So any analyst who wants to remain employed will provide the analysis the boss wants to see, not what he needs to see. And this kind of warped, demented thinking will persist until objective reality makes itself known with all the subtlety of a ship foundering upon the rocky shore.

Re:And some comments on press releases...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Taco gets a lot of flack for that, but honestly I did agree with him. And I still do. The first Ipod sucked. Mac only, expensive as heck, not much storage space. But, it didn't stay sucky. It improved over the years, gradually adding features to make it appeal to more consumers. I'd say the release of the ipod with a usb interface for pc's was the ground breaking announcement. If you still thought they wouldn't make an impact then you should be made fun of.

I mean, did anyone really think windows was going to be a hit after microsoft released windows 1.0?

Short Circuit

[rumblin'rabbit]

I liked this part from the Circuit City story...

The company has completed a wage management initiative that will result in the separation of approximately 3,400 store Associates. The separations, which are occurring today, focused on Associates who were paid well above the market-based salary range for their role. New Associates will be hired for these positions and compensated at the current market range for the job.

How far up your butt does your head have to be to refer to a layoff as a "separation"? Such gutless prose deserves our complete contempt.

It has been my experience that managers who lay off their best people to save money don't understand their business. This is what happens when you hire MBA's.