Promotions Gone Wrong
from the oops dept
Two news bits (both from the NYTimes) about internet promotions gone wrong. The first is from eCrush (a site that lets you send anonymous notes to someone you have a crush on) who apparently sent out matchbooks inscribed with "stop carrying that torch" to magazines and newspapers. Apparently, it's illegal to send matches through the mail without properly labeling them. Something to do with them being flammable, I'd guess. Next is about Despair.com's mock press release concerning trademarking ":-(" (mentioned here last week). Apparently some of the kiddies over at Slashdot believed the news of the lawsuit and inundated them with angry emails (for the record: two people emailed me thinking it was real as well). However, the article does mention one interesting thing: the trademark is real. Despair.com requested the trademark as a joke, but got it. The lawsuit, of course, is a joke.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team