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Comment by tsally | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I can understand that. I wasn't trying to challenge your journalist integrity. As you noted, it wasn't a controversial piece. I was simply saying that trying for a comment in such a small time frame by email is pointless since a response in that time is very unlikely. I was thinking either a phone call or publishing right away as alternatives.

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Actually Facebook tends to be quite responsive. They have a general press Email address that goes to something like ten PR people, so it isn't unusual to get a response within ten minutes (or at least a note saying that someone is looking into the issue).

Ah, then I understand where you were coming from. Definitely did not know that when I made my original comment. :)

The TC post does hint at a serious motive for the prank though.

...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.

I love the fact that the feature (of faxing photos) actually works. Telling sign of true geeks.

Yeah quite cool, hope they'll roll out this feature for all of us!

The Facebook/TechCrunch litmus test of feature design:

- come up with crazy ass feature - implement in the minimal possible way - enable feature for techcrunch network only - see if they write about it - check comments on techcrunch - response bad -> yank feature, nobody the wiser, response positive -> implement feature by pulling an all nighter.

And everybody else.

I figure that pulling a TechCrunch will go down in to history as 'getting an online publication to write something terribly wrong to teach them a lesson about journalism and fact checking'.

Let's see how long it takes before someone else pulls a stunt like this on TC.

Hair trigger journalism.

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