On the subject of the recently announced YouTube competitor (which is clearly vaporware at this point), Chris DiBona pens this excellent rant.

I'm picturing the meetings. The posturing. The bandwidth provisioning. The advertising meetings. The legal reviews. The pr reviews. The plans. The emails. The cross-functional , inter corporate steering committees.
Who pays for what with what? Who is in charge? Who picks the content? Does anyone pick the content? Who can upload? What can they upload? When can they upload? How long will it take to transcode? Can a video be downloaded to iPod? Archos? Zune? Who will monitor the uploads?

I have trouble imagining he's wrong in this case. The rant continues, of course. You should really read the whole thing.

Anyway, he eventually concludes with:

So, end of today's post. The moral: Don't Talk. Do. Don't yammer. Launch. Release. Ship.

I couldn't agree more. In the last few years I've really become sensitive to these sorts of lame announcements. The feel like the sort of thing you'd get from a politician during an election year, not a company (or group of companies) hell bent on delivering something truly amazing and innovative.

You know the old sayings: Actions speak louder than words and talk is cheap.

The slightly more context aware version here is shut up and ship!

Posted by jzawodn at March 30, 2007 07:37 AM

Reader Comments
# Darren said:

Amen, if your product is crap, it's not going to matter whether you pre-announced it or not. There is some truth in "first to market wins", but it's "to market" not "to press release".

on March 30, 2007 11:07 AM
# Kevin Burton said:

Real hax0rs ship code!

on March 30, 2007 05:08 PM
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