The days when you still had a chance to be heard

Josh Williams is a great story-teller—a quality I'm sure has played no small part in his successful career. Reading his wonderfully-told story of Gowalla, something he said really hit home (emphasis mine):

We believed this idea to be the craziest of the lot, so we set about on a rigid pace to launch it in time for SXSW (these being the days you still had a chance of being heard).

How true it is—today it seems near impossible to be heard.

We're about a week out from launching Rego, Makalu's second iPhone app. To prepare for the launch, I've been reaching out to people in the press who typically cover app launches and reviews—and have failed miserably. I've tried different pitches—some long, some short—and I've read the book, but I've yet to receive one single reply.

I've come to use Rego so much myself that it's earned a coveted spot in my iPhone's dock, and that's not because my company created it—I really love it! And knowing it's a great product makes it that much more frustrating to see sometimes trivial apps (to my eyes at least) get coverage on the big review sites, when we can't.

(We had a similar experience with our other product, RaceSplitter, an iPhone app for do-it-yourself timing of sport events. RaceSplitter is a truly disruptive product—in its own little niche market—and has been used to time nearly half a million racers in more than 60 countries. But just like Rego, we haven't had any success getting broader press attention.)

Books like Pitch Perfect warn that, these days, one unfortunately shouldn't really expect a response as bloggers and writers get hundreds of requests per day—but it's still really frustrating.