Two types of hype seem to exist in this industry -- hype generated from an awesome new product/service, or hype generated because some already successful people threw money at it. This happens to be the latter.
If some big names weren't attached, no one would be talking about it at all because the basic gist (at least so far) is, "It's like Twitter for photos but less powerful".
How many photo sharing apps does a world need? I'm certainly covered.
ps: not singling out Jason (I love you Jason).
That being said, in ever other industry (music, film, etc) this seems to happen as well.
I love the fact that folks are excited about the LAUNCH conference because of my work on Silicon Alley Reporter, Engadget and because i created TechCrunch50.
Keep in mind it is also a slight burden, in that folks expect your projects to boom overnight--and that's not how 99% of launches go.
folks ripped Mahalo.com apart at the start, and it's only since we hit the top 200 sites and 20M+ video views a month that we've started to get a little credit.