The TC post does hint at a serious motive for the prank though.
...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.
...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.
- 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.
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.