I think that this whole issue was handled completely wrong. Jason should have sent an email to the company first and foremost, and if they didn't do anything about it THEN it would be ok to put it out there publicly.

You have to give the company the chance to right their wrong. It very well could have been an overlooked detail and again it could have been exactly what Jason claimed. However, Jason didn't give them a chance to make it right before attempting to drag their names through the mud.

Heck, even one of the managers at 37s wrote on their comments section that when they have customers complain, they encourage them to send them emails and not post on some site out in the middle of the ether. That is basically what Jason did, instead of complaining about the site to GS he complained about it on his own site where the GS staff had to go and find it. Hypocrasy much?

"Heck, even one of the managers at 37s wrote on their comments section that when they have customers complain, they encourage them to send them emails and not post on some site out in the middle of the ether."

Yes, it's hard to do tech support via any third party that sets themselves up as your representative.

"Hypocrasy much?"

Among all the people who talk about honest, transparent communication but are unhappy that this wasn't settled under-the-table...I'd say arguably so.

I don't think people are unhappy that this wasn't settled under the table. No one is saying that any of these concerns were unfounded.

But I AM saying that it was irresponsible for 37s not to give GS the chance to rectify the situation before deciding to go ahead and try to ruin GS's reputation. Had 37s first dealt with this privately and then blogged about the outcome, it would have been a MUCH different blog post (or perhaps not if the accusations proved to be correct).

"Yes, it's hard to do tech support via any third party that sets themselves up as your representative."

I would argue that it's hard to deal with any criticism that you don't know exists...

"But I AM saying that it was irresponsible for 37s not to give GS the chance to rectify the situation before deciding to go ahead and try to ruin GS's reputation."

GS wronged 37S in a way that was probably legally actionable. 37S has no responsibility to GS to forbear from criticizing them. They opted to criticize and see what GS did instead of starting legal actions; this was generous of them. (Like I say elsewhere on this page, there are some fallacious assumptions being made by those attacking Fried.)

The only irresponsible party is GS.

"I would argue that it's hard to deal with any criticism that you don't know exists..."

Indeed - except that the ultimate complaint is that 37S made their complaint in a venue and fashion that resulted in a lot of people, including GS, seeing it!

I posted this in the last thread, but the connection here is more clear:

Paul writes in his startup FAQ:

"The one book we encourage startup founders to read is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's critically important for anyone in business."

If you read that you get that one of the central points is: don't put people on the defensive. Guy Kawasaki in Art of the Start has a paragraph labeled "Wait When You Hate":

"Although you should always answer e-mail in under twenty-four hours, there is one case where you should wait at least twenty-four hours before responding: when you're angry, offended or argumentative. E-mail written when you're in these moods tends to exacerbate problems, so delay your response."

I think this would be a more valid point to raise if we were discussing GS's complaints about a cease-and-desist order from 37S.

I also remain a little puzzled at the pretense that Fried's post was some off-the-cuff rant.

One of the salient points that seems to be getting lost here is that the damage, at least as perceived by Jason (and to a large extent acknowledged by GS), was done in a very public way. So, simply fixing the problem going forward - as everyone acknowledges GS did, quickly and effectively - only addresses half the issue from the "wronged" party's perspective.

If you buy Jason's point, this pretty much had to be handled in a loud, public way. On some level, of course, there's no undoing what's done. Certainly a good number of 37s customers who got a bad impression from having their complaints "ignored" by 37s aren't going to notice this blog-spat, and their negative impressions will remain. That's life. But by bringing this to light publicly, and making an issue out of it, at least some of those people will have their impressions corrected, which is only fair.

All that said, could the phrasing have been a little more nuanced and less accusatory? Of course. Was Jason right to assume evil rather than genuine ignorance or lack of perspective? Probably not. (Though it might be reasonable to ask at what point ignorance, when it's so overwhelmingly in your favor, becomes negligence).

But the notion of "37s should have just talked to GS privately, which would have resulted in the same fixes" misses a good part of Jason's argument, which is that a public "offense" (for lack of a better word) ought to be addressed publicly.

So I'll actually buy that there are confused 37s customers out there and that a loud blog post will help alleviate that.

But a note AFTER the resolution would have had a similar effect. Something like, "We had an issue with GS-- we thought their language was confusing and, when we reached out, they agreed and made some changes. BRAVO! We've asked them to drop a note to anyone who's posted a question on 37s GS areas to let them know where they can get help if they want to talk to 37s reps. They agreed. BRAVO!"

i.e. do the blog post, but do it after the happy ending.

Does a bombastic blog post get more attention and probably capture a few eyeballs that it otherwise might not? Sure. Would I ensure respect for my newly seeded lawn by savagely beating up the first kid to walk on it? Sure.

Kids and startups make mistakes. Let's be decent human beings when they do.

You're giving GS a pass because they are a small startup. If Microsoft came out with a similar service it would have no defenders.

Fried did the right thing by bringing this up in public. Your "BRAVO!" story is naive. If he would have pursued your polite strategy it would have ended in nothing but a sales pitch. That's how GS's business works.

I think the error here is in remarks like these:

From Croft: "You’d like to think these kinds of companies would be supportive of one another, especially in times like this."

There's an underlying assumption here of some sort of community - or even family - with commensurate obligations. In the eyes of some, Fried has somehow breached a sort of familial allowance, making him the bad guy in their eyes. In the way most people wouldn't generally go first to the police if their teenage cousin stole something from them (but instead work it out among the family), Fried shouldn't have publicly mentioned that GS wronged them, but should have kept it in the family and out of the sight of outsiders.

Except, of course, there's no family here. "Small, web-centric companies" isn't a community, it's just a commonality.

To continue the example above, here's no obligation upon you to cover for some stranger or even acquaintance's theft of your belongings. If you opt to announce where other people can hear you, "Alright, you stole this thing of mine; I want you to bring it back," instead of going to the cops, you've hardly the bully who's handling it wrong - you're being generous.

From Dimon: "I think the problem is still the perception that the GS team is made up of fundamentally bad people, and I assure you that’s not the case."

The fallacy here, that actions are innocent and harmless unless they're carried out by "fundamentally bad people", is very common and just as harmful. A company (or association, or government, or any organization) doesn't have to be staffed by escapees from Mordor to do harmful and abusive things - nor even outright unethical things.

People defending GS from criticism on the grounds that they're obviously not monsters (for heaven's sake!) miss the point that it doesn't take monsters to hurt other people, even in relatively elaborate ways. Human beings rationalize, human beings justify, and human beings miss the forest for the trees.

Put these two attitudes together, and we get the response that Fried should have kept things in the family; after all, those GS kids obviously didn't hurt anyone with their peccadilloes.

Jeff Croft is the only reasonable adult in the whole thing