Free Publicity: Who Do We Help?

On messiah machine day, blogger Anil Dash wonders if all the free publicity mustered by Apple's marketing machine might just be better directed at something else. This piece was originally published on his blog.

On messiah machine day, blogger Anil Dash wonders if all the free publicity mustered by Apple's marketing machine might just be better directed at something else. This piece was originally published on his blog.

Bill issued a coded greeting to Twitter; Anil Dash called you a weather wimp; and Leah Jones tweeted from the driver's seat. The Twitterati want you to embark on brave new adventures.
Jake Tapper needled the White House over word usage; one blog company taunted another over font usage; and an editor got heckled over link usage. The Twitterati forgot their history.
The Twitterati ended the week punchy: Kevin Rose was plundering sofware; Anil Dash gleefully promoted the term "Facesquatting" and Mark Glaser lost his Kindle to a teenaged girl.
Sad Web nerds plan to stay in front of their computers late Friday night to obtain short, easy-to-remember Facebook addresses ("facebook.com/sadwebnerd"). It's the start of a geeky land grab! But true geeks know why this is stupid.
Anil Dash, Glenn Feischman and Nick Douglas created a parallel, imaginary Apple conference and Xeni Jardin met a very strange CNN producer. Life was surreal for the Twitterati.
I blame Guy Kawasaki. Ten days after the relentless listmaker joined the advisory board of Vancouver-based citizen journalism hub NowPublic, the site published a link-baiting "The 50 most influential people in New York." We've had this piece in our inboxes since Friday morning, but we couldn't figure out how to get…
What's wrong with Anil Dash? As of today, the New York blogger, Six Apart's vice president of evangelism, has been at the San Francisco-based blog-software company for five years. Dash, the company's first employee, is one of its largest individual shareholders, but he's mostly vested by now. Why stick around? In…
As a part of a new "blogging services" strategy, blog software firm Six Apart has acquired social media applications builder Apperceptive and launched a new ad network. SAI questions whether the world needs another ad network. It doesn't. But we also wonder about Six Apart's timing. Why not launch the ad network…
Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's blog-tools startup, is readying an upgrade to its WordPress software this week. Anil Dash of Six Apart took the occasion to let WordPress users know they can upgrade to his company's Movable Type instead. It's a move straight out of Oracle's handbook. But Mullenweg freaked out, calling…
Professional funnylady and amateur gossip Heather Gold just invited Julia Allison, professional gossip and amateur tech event crasher, onto her panel on — ha, ha — Gossip. "Explain to Shaila [Dewan, New York Times correspondent] what you do again," asks Heather, "since her coverage is of real disasters and not the…
Honestly, does anyone come to SXSW Interactive for work? There are just enough earnest Web-design panels to make it a plausible tax writeoff. Anil Dash of blog-software maker Six Apart gets it: For years, he's been organizing a kickball game in a park near the Austin Convention Center. Sadly, no fights broke out…
Who is Penelope Trott? According to a Twitter sent by Six Apart executive Anil Dash, a close confidante of Ben and Mena Trott, the founders of the blog-software company, she's made him "smile all day." We can only guess that Penelope is the name of the Trotts' long-expected offspring. If so, congratulations. We…
I never intended for the blogger-baby story, which began with the birth of Ollie Kottke to A-list bloggers Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan, to become quite such a saga, but news has a way of happening. Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield are no longer expecting a baby — they have a daughter, Sonnet Beatrice…
Last week, the birth of a son (and future blogger) to Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan reminded us of another famous Web personality who triedhad a colleague try, bizarrely, to claim that the mom-to-be's pregnancy was "off the record." (Memo to other would-be secret-keepers: "Off the record" is always a matter of mutual…
NICK DOUGLAS — TechCrunch acquired FuckedCompany, eh? Ha...ha? As Anil Dash said one year ago, "Your April Fool's Day joke sucks." Sure, kudos to TechCrunch for exploiting some timing, but what website hasn't run a press release on April 1 announcing a fake merger or a radical change of focus? But the problem with…
LOCKHART STEELE — You might not have heard of the new foodsite Serious Eats yet, but at the rate that noted food journalist Ed Levine is stockpiling blog talent, you probably will sooner or later. (Or, if you choose to keep reading, now! Thirty-second backstory: Levine, recognizing that his vision for a…