WhackArnolds – Technology, Politics, Pop Culture, Life commentary delivered hot and fresh!

There is a huge thirst for technology news and product announcements/reviews online. People jump from Google results to get every little drop of information about their products. This of course will lead to shady reporting and lame attempts to game the system to make some extra cash. With that in mind, enter the Gizmodo boys.

If you don’t know about Gizmodo or the story that took over the internet, Gizmodo recently got their hands on a prototype of the next Apple iPhone. All the speculation was proven when Apple contacted Gizmodo to get their device back. If you need to know the back story, Google is your friend. The find was advertising gold for GizModo as they milked the news and features to continue to get people to visit their website. Once on their website, the problems for GizModo became apparent.

The first problem was that they purchased arguably stolen goods. The phone was “found” in a bar and the person who found the device “waited” for the owner to return. The problem there is how long did this guy wait? Is there video evidence that he sat at the bar waiting for the owner to return? Waiting around is not considered a “good effort to return the device”, which is in the California law books. How about this, turn the phone on and find the number for the owner in the address book and returning it. Another idea would be to post something on the owner’s Facebook account telling him that the phone was found. I mean, you did go to the person’s facebook page to find out who he was right? Finally, the could’ve the person who found the phone should have just given the phone to the bartender and said it was left behind. All of these options would’ve been better.

Secondly, the guy shopped the phone to two competing blogs trying to get the best deal and Gizmodo was the only blog to announce a price for the goods. This is where both the person selling the phone and Gizmodo got stupid. If you are going to sell the phone, why wouldn’t you sell it anonymously? On the Gizmodo’s side, why would you buy stolen merchandise? There is no way that you can deny knowing that this was a stolen phone. Purchasing stolen goods is also a problem, a problem for you! What did you think this was, you are flaunting to the world that you bought a stolen phone! Being a journalist doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want and flash the press badge to get out of trouble.

What else did they do wrong? Well, how about dragging the whole story out over days and days to get the maximum amount of exposure out of the story? I envision the conversation going something like this:

Gizmodo Dude #1: “Hey, we have the phone, let’s see how many views we can get out of this thing!”
Gizmodo Dude #2: “Yea, let’s put out little pieces every day and drain this story dry.”
Gizmodo Dude #1: “Genius! We’re in the money, we’re in the money!”
Both guys do the Toyota jump from the old commercials.

I seriously believe that no one thought for a second that this would backfire on them, or that the totalitarian Apple would not come down on them like Zeus himself. You didn’t think that Steve Jobs would be pissed and end you? They have done it before!

After realizing that the Apple pwn-job was on it’s way, they started posting little “cover my butt” comments into their posts about how they didn’t know the phone was stolen, etc. Everyone knew it was stolen at this point, this was a soft-batch way of covering your bases after the bases had been stolen! So what happens, Jason Chen gets his house raided and now has a world of hurt on his hand. Also, a nice little side note was that Apple was on the steering committee for the task force that eventually karate chopped Chen’s door down. The convenience of having your own task force is awesome, and not knowing that Apple had their own task force is even sweeter.

Finally, they completely dragged the employee, who lost the phone, through the mud and then threw him in the wood chipper. Everyone knows this guy’s name and even Steve Wozniak has been found wearing a shirt making fun of the guy. His Facebook page has been exposed and one can only know what has happened to him in the dungeons of the Apple compound. All who have been exposed to the whole story feels bad for the guy because his reputation has been crushed. When he eventually gets canned, after his punishment has been delivered, he will probably have problems finding a position like that again.

So, here’s a good job and well done to Gizmodo for messing up not only your reputation but also the reputation of everyone involved. I would like to extend a congratulation for the excellent job of protecting the alleged thief and not the employee. I can’t wait to see what happens here as the civil suit will be amazing. I also can’t wait to see how many Apple lawyers will descend on Gizmodo and what kind of damages Apple will seek. My bet is that Gizmodo goes bye bye.

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