I can’t blame them much of the time, but it’s a two way street.
Over the weekend I read Shane Cultra’s write-up of Webfest. (Great seeing you Shane, by the way.)
It was a good write-up, especially his last point:
The domain companies don’t like the bloggers that bitch all the time. Several conversations included companies asking why we don’t try and contact them directly before writing. I’ll give one example. Talking to the nice representatives from DomainNameSales they told me that somebody had complained about not paying via MassPay on Paypal. There are jurisdictional issues with paypal and they can’t use it from the Cayman Islands. Yet the article was written without prior communication to ask why? In short, the reputation of bloggers is pretty good with domain investors, pretty weak with domain companies.
This is true. I think domain companies rightfully get upset when a blogger complains or makes allegations without checking on the facts or asking for a comment.
I have no idea which blog DNS was referring to, but this is a classic example of when it makes sense to just ask the company before whining. If you aren’t happy with the response, that’s fine. Blog about it. But ask first before whining.
That said, it’s a two way street.
The domain news business has gotten a bit competitive. It’s important to get important and breaking news published quickly.
Which is why it’s important for domain companies to respond quickly to blogger inquiries.
I’m always willing to hear both sides of a story. But if I email/call you today and don’t hear back 12 hours later, I’m not going to hold the story. Depending on the story (i.e. the news is already getting out there), your fuse is probably a lot shorter than that.
Smart companies (or at least companies that care about what’s written about them) know this. There are a couple companies in the industry that respond back immediately to any inquiries I make.
Others take days, and then they think I’m beating up on them or not being fair.
Frankly, if it takes a couple days to respond to an inquiry about news, you deserve to be beat up a little.
If it’s an inquiry about something not as pressing, then a day or two is no big deal. (It always helps if you respond back saying “I’m looking into this and will get back to you by ___”.)
Domain companies and domain bloggers both need something from each other. Companies want to get the word out about their products and services. Bloggers want interesting stuff to write about. It’s a two-way street.
So to the DNS person who was talking to Shane: you’re absolutely right. To the companies that don’t build effective communication channels with bloggers: it’s your own fault.
These days you see more often well-known domain blogs which simply concentrate to advertise domain companies or domain related products.
Was it this story, I wonder?
http://onlinedomain.com/2013/01/24/news/internet-traffic-cant-do-paypal-masspay-parking-earnings-take-a-5-dive/
Contains the text “I contacted Internet Traffic and asked them”.
If that is the article then it seems perfectly fine to me.
There is a fact:
Domain companies rarely respond or comment to blogger posts and for some companies it’s simply never.
As a proof you can see DomainNameSales.com did not commented when probably this blogger outlined a question that many of their subscribers may have.
Sure the blogger was a bit sharp introducing his question but this have a lot to do with my next fact.
There is a second fact:
People tend to not respond when it’s something they do not like, or are not interested, … or maybe think you have low interest.
This leads to have people frustrated or with the feeling to not receive any consideration.
So when this happens to a blogger he translates this bad feeling to a post that sometimes can looks a bit rude, but who finally is only the result of the poor consideration received.
It happened to me recently with SnapNames.com (who simply never respond to my emails for years) and Namejet.com who only respond to the ones that interest him.
This leaded me to also post something with the hope to get a response:
http://www.domainware.com/2013/01/no-longer-lose-a-great-domain-deal/
But due to the first fact this not changed anything except I have now the certitude they receive my message.
The only I can say for a better world:
Domain companies:
– Try to respond to ALL email enquiries.
– Comment on posts related to your company.
You will get fans and not the inverse!
Francois –
You are correct that some companies don’t respond. For those companies, I rarely give the the benefit of the doubt nor will I wait for their response (since it’s not coming).
I did contact DNS. I opened a support ticket asking about why masspay wasn’t possible.
They replied what I wrote in the article.
I am not sure what more I could do.
I even suggested that they should contact paypal as “I think you can ask Paypal to enable you Masspay. I have seen many people outside US/Europe do this.”
I don’t understand how stating a fact is whining.
On another article I complained about a Sedo bug. They told it was going to be fixed in a week. Then 2 weeks. 2 months later it is still there. What am supposed to do?
@ Konstantinos – if your article is the one that was being referred to, I agree that your article is fine. You contacted them, they told you why they don’t do MassPay, and you included their explanation in your post.
This comment: “I don’t understand how stating a fact is whining.” was directed to DNS.
Here’s a news flash. Politicians hate bloggers. Companies in general hate bloggers. Anyone who’s criticized hates bloggers.
Hardly a revelation!