YMusicBlog: Product Blog or PR Shenanigans?

Posted by iancr, December 15, 2005 at 7:56 am, in YMusicBlog General.

I’ve been outed.

I wasn’t planning on opening the door to this site for a while yet. I was just trying to build a few stories up here so we’d have some back catalog (so to speak) when it all went live. That’s why no one but me has posted here, and it’s mostly a bunch of old posts from my personal blog. I’ve tried to get Lauren to post about the Shakira event and Michael to post about Message Boards 3.0 and Robyn to post about The Grammys and Howard Stein to post about Howard Stern (yes, Howard Stein on Howard Stern — funny, right?). But they’re all too busy doing real work to have turned in their assignments yet and I didn’t think anyone was going to be looking at the site so I told them to take their time.

But I guess we got some crossed wires with PR because they linked to the page and now Mr. Smarty Boots blogged about it and fifty people sent me his article inside of ten minutes.

That’s cool. Lets get this party started. Lauren, Michael, Robyn, Howard: turn in your assignments, please. It’s on.

What’s irritating is that Rubel (if you’re gonna call me Roger, I can call you Rubel) is questioning if this is a product blog or just clever PR. I’ll lay out the facts and let you decide:

  1. It runs on a $40 Y! Hosting account just like anyone can set up at hosting.yahoo.com and I spent my own $9 with Yahoo! Domains to register the domain.
  2. My boss did not ask me to set this site up.
  3. The “initial post” he points to in his blog was posted on Nov 27th, 2005. That’s the Sunday of Thanksgiving break, which reeks of a “spare time” sort of project IMHO (as does this midnight work-related post…hrm).
  4. The word “jackass” appears on this site, much to the chagrin of Ashley in legal (who is very very sweet and I mean no disrespect).
  5. I am thus far the only person who has posted to this site and (the last time I checked) I don’t work in the PR department.

Of course I’m being sarcastic because I’m embarrassed at having been caught off guard. Steve has every right to question the intent of this site. Honestly, it’s just a way for the people who make the products to have a direct dialog with the people who use the products, in an effort to make better products. No more, no less.

Thanks for finding it news-worthy.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

3 Comments »

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  1. I forget to ask, “May I call you Ian?”. Oh, and pull your pants back up. Being caught like that doesn’t suit you…

    Comment by docbliny — December 15, 2005 #

  2. Ian’s a Good Sport

    I love how Ian C. Rogers over on the Yahoo Music Blog is such a good sport (although a tad snarky one) after I outed his little project yesterday. Ian, you can be snarkier. It’s ok. Your motto isn’t “Do

    Trackback by Micro Persuasion — December 16, 2005 #

  3. […] Yahoo! has a new music blog that looks really good.  It is (kind of official).  My question is why can I listen to Launchcast via Yahoo! Instant Messenger but not via Yahoo! Music Engine.  My help request said it was because I was in Canada and because of licensing.  It seems weird that I can listen to music in Canada via some forms of media but not others.  Still, I like it better than iTunes. […]

    Pingback by Wendy Cooper’s weblog » Yahoo! Music Blog — December 16, 2005 #

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