SAI/former VentureBeat reporter here: it's considered a moderate offense. Could infer to your/our Twitter followers etc. that there was an exchange for positive coverage, which is a pop at our credibility.
Credibility is basically all we have. (However small it is.)
SAI, former VentureBeat reporter here, few observations:
1) What is Buffer? If I don't know what the company does, I'm going to pass it off to the tips folder and it will probably die in obscurity.
2) The "saw the post you wrote yesterday" is not the approach you want. I cover social games — be aware that I cover social games and make it relevant to that. Reading my last three posts is not enough to tailor a pitch, because we write about a lot of things and they aren't all necessarily on our beat.
3) Seriously, introduce yourself. Don't do it with a pitch — let me know who you are and what you do. We do Q&As all the time with companies that have no news. You are 100x more likely to get published if I know who you are, what you do and why what you are doing is important.
4) How does this relate to normals? Most Twitter users don't actually Tweet. This is useful to me, but not necessarily my readers — who are of utmost importance to me.
5) Know the publication you are pitching. Blind pitching everyone is a waste of time — if you are a social game developer, go for Inside Social, GamesBeat, TechCrunch, etc. Fast Company is not going to listen to you.
6) We have to rush through literally hundreds of pitches each day. Just because we phrased something differently than you'd like, if it is still factually accurate, you're going to upset a reporter if you try to nitpick on wording. I once encountered a PR person that was yelling at me because I didn't call an online deals site a "mobile platform" and, instead, an "online deals site."
7) Also, we do want to know what you think. Entrepreneur and founder input is valuable in just about any story. If some big news happens — Steve Jobs resigns, for example — let us know what you think. When Jobs passed away, the first person I heard from was Box.net's Aaron Levie, who told me it was such a gargantuan loss and he was basically his idol and what made him want to become an entrepreneur. That, in of itself, is a story because Levie is running a company with a val of more than $500 million.
8) Don't be afraid to have a personal relationship with reporters — we aren't going to screw you, because blowing a relationship is worthless in this industry.
Was a blast — thought it was a bit weird to see everyone trying to take pictures with the 10.1 tablets. I'm hoping the novelty wears off quickly and tablet photography doesn't become a thing.
I thought it was great that you dropped in on Hacker News — something like this is exactly the kind of low-cost commentary we need from some of the leaders of the valley from time to time.
I feel like there are at least a few disagreements about the state of a tech bubble in the valley. I mean, the poll got a few votes, so it's an issue worth noting — right? Then again, that probably comes from a significant amount of inexperience on my end. But I feel like your opinion is valuable even outside of the subset of the conversation in Hacker News. (Maybe we need a Bolzanno-Weierstrass analogy for discussion within specific venues and the discussion in the valley as a whole.)
I just think something like this is an easy way to get your opinion on the matter without having to get in front of you and waste your time on an issue that isn't exactly pressing. I mean, I don't know how I would feel if reporters hounded me every day asking if I still believed there was a tech bubble. But it's still an issue that obviously a lot of people care about and like to read about.
Anyway, my two cents. But, like I said, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to this whole "silicon valley" thing.
As a newbie in the blogging culture in Silicon Valley, I honestly can't agree more. I want to see more of this style of reporting and I try pretty hard to do it myself.
I guess I'm what you'd call a "classically trained" journalist. So maybe I'm just feeling a little pretentious or annoyed at the state of things out here. But 99 percent of the time it feels like people are too damn lazy to pick up the phone and call their sources — or even shoot them an email and ask for a quick comment. I almost fell into that trap when I first joined the technorati out here but have since reverted to my own personal instincts of actually talking to people for stories (I know, what a concept, right?)
For a new face in silicon valley it's honestly extremely discouraging and frustrating — not only seeing it in other blogs but from my co-workers from time to time at VentureBeat as well. It's even more discouraging to be encouraged by my editors from time to time to simply bust out a story without any additional reporting. I feel pretty proud that I have not done a straight reblog without additional reporting in more than a month when it's merited.
Naturally, some stories don't demand that kind of additional reporting. So there's a place for analysis, commentary, and the like. I'll be damned if I end up as an MG Siegler-type reporter that injects opinion/praise/vitriol in every single article I write, though. I don't really see that opinion changing any time soon, either.
(Edit for quick background: former Reuters reporter, graduated in 2010.)
Hey Swah, I pinged Anthony (the writer of the article) to get his butt in here and answer your questions. You might get a direct answer more quickly if you comment directly on the site or email him, though.
Enterprise Google mail also appears to be working.