02
Jan 2012
11 Comments
ChevronWP7 Labs and the misinterpreted tweet

I see my friends Alex Wilhelm and Tom Warren covered some comments I made on the ChevronWP7 stream, bless them for that. Specifically, I made two comments on the stream, after successfully selling 10,000 unlocks close to the start of the New Year:

[1] ChevronWP7 Labs enters the New Year with 10,000 token sales under our belt. Hooah! ^RR

[2] Our agreement with Microsoft was to sell no more than 10,000 tokens, hence "sold out". We’re discussing if we want to up that number. ^RR

The use of our and we were references to “the ChevronWP7 team”, i.e. Chris Walsh, Long Zheng, and myself. I mean, the tweet did come from the ChevronWP7 account after all. Here’s how I designed it to be read:

We [the team] are still discussing if we [the team] want to up this number.

Here’s how it was interpreted:

MICROSOFT HATES THE WORLD; MICROSOFT IS SHUTTING DOWN CHEVRONWP7; THEY DENIED THEM TOKENS!!!!11111

Microsoft isn’t involved in our discussion yet. And they can’t provide us with more unlocks because we haven’t asked yet. If we do request more, we’re sure Microsoft will respond positively – as they have in the past.

What frustrates me is that I know and like these guys personally, but corners were cut and no fact checking was performed. Despite being only a Skype call/KiK/email/IM away, no one bothered to contact me or anyone on the team.

Now I’m stuck with cleaning up the mess.

  • http://twitter.com/billreiss Bill Reiss

    Yeah that’s what passes for “journalism” these days, you’re lucky if they correct themselves and update the article after they are told what the right information is.

  • http://beingmanan.com/ Manan

    Hire WaggEd. 

    • Anonymous

      Thank you
      for your email; I would be happy to look into your request. Can you please
      provide me with your specific deadline, as well as, any additional questions
      you may have?

      • http://www.istartedsomething.com/ Long Zheng

         Classic!

  • Anonymous

    Lesson to be learned – be more clear when tweeting and consider misinterpretation whenever making statments.

    To be fair, your publishing partner Paul is a sensationalist who doesn’t fact check or hesitate to troll himself for web hits. So ripping into bloggers (they’re not journalists or even a collectively intelligent bunch – mostly middle age dweebs) is not really fair.

  • http://wp7app.de Thomas

    The important question remains: why do you hesitate to up the number of tokens? The community asks for more and you’re now a huge part of the Windows Phone platform and therefore the success of the ecosystem.

  • nil

    As a person who is seriously considering buying a Windows Phone, I would like to tell you that your app is (was?) one the selling points for me. The platform becomes much less interesting without the option to unlock the phone.

    Please take this in consideration when discussing the possibility of requesting more tokens.

  • Mikedeko

    As one who purchased a token, I want to thank you for the service you provided. I am glad that you have posted this clarification on what “sold out” means. It is unfortunate that people seem to think that any venture must continue into perpetuity regardless of the situations of the people involved. I hope that you decide to request more tokens. Whatever your decision, I wish you future success.

  • Russell Davidson

    I was bummed to find out the tokens had sold out. Teach me to wait til the unlock issues passed … if only I’d known that supplies were limited. If you do restock (fingers crossed), I promise to line right up this time.

  • http://twitter.com/w0rddriven Jeremy Brayton

    This is a service you provide. You probably make some money on it I’m sure but it’s probably nowhere near as easy as anyone thinks to coordinate all of this. So by this definition, the team is well within it’s right to simply *weigh the damn OPTION* of continuing to provide the service. There is an overhead cost to all of this very few of us know exactly and I’m also aware of the snags along the way that made an even deeper impact on “is this worth it to continue?” It’s also a team effort, so everyone has to make the consensus (usually) and I’m sure this isn’t something anyone of you is taking lightly.

    Also to be clear to everyone, this is the team’s vision and it’s also well within their right to discontinue the new tokens at any time. I know the unlock should be for life so that should never change but they don’t have to give the reigns over to anyone. I think the only people they’d likely even trust would be Microsoft and they obviously don’t care that much or they would’ve cut Chevron out of the loop long ago.

    I think the more disturbing thing is the seeming trend that ZOMG TEH SKY IS FALLING ON MS-LAND that seems to hit just about every decision remotely near Microsoft. This wasn’t even in their decision-making process yet and people were already quick to say “Look! The underdog’s getting stomped yet again!” without any real verification.

    What really sucks is now it’s *way* more likely that even if Chevron decides to continue that Microsoft is easily poised to deny their request. Why should they even bother? You’ve all but signed the death certificate for them. I think more of MS and the team’s ability to smooth things over again but this just makes things harder for *no positive reason whatsoever*. Thanks for that, I’m sure WP7 as a whole needed it.

  • http://www.masonbogert.info/ Mason Bogert

    Please restock! I want to try developing on Windows Phone. That is the only reason I bought Windows Phone over iOS was because of you! And then when it ships I go to your site and you’re out of tokens! C’mon please restock! Why not? Whats the point of discussing just hurry up and restock!