Jeffrey McManus

Let’s say you have a product or technology feature and it’s going to launch in, say, a month.

When is the best time to start talking to reviewers and bloggers about it? That’s right, in a month, not today.

Why? Because reporters and bloggers are going to write stories about your new product or feature as soon as they hear about it.

Pre-announcing products is bad for your business because it dilutes your launch momentum, but more importantly, it demonstrates utter contempt for users, who have to scour your site twice (once before the launch and again after the launch) to access the new functionality. (Assuming that users remember to go back to your site to check out the new functionality a month after your pre-announcement.)

There’s also the chance that if you pre-announce too soon, the product or feature will never actually see the light of day for one reason or another, which makes you look like an untrustworthy/incompetent tool. I’ve fallen into that trap in the past — never again.

This has annoyed me (and wasted my time) twice in the last two days now — yesterday with the pre-announcement of a new version of Google Analytics and today with the pre-announcement of the addition of music videos to Last.fm.

Neither of these features are generally available yet, but in their mindless quest for scoops, several pro tech bloggers described the new functionality as having been launched. Cut it out, guys.