Early this morning, I broke a story about the Beta launch of Zynga’s Rewardville after I noticed that the web address Rewardville.com was resolving to an actual web site and not to a GoDaddy Parked page. This followed a week of speculation of what Zynga might have planned for the domain name.
Just over a week ago, another domain blogger Elliot Silver first pondered whether Zynga purchased the name, then I was able to confirm the social gaming company applied for a trademark in Europe shortly thereafter.
When I posted my story this morning, I tipped off several news sites and technology blogs.
Robin Wauters was the first to write me back after he posted the story on TechCrunch, giving Fusible.com and Elliot Silver credit for ultimately uncovering the trail to Zynga. A big thanks to Robin Wauters, and other news sites who credited their stories.
Not all technology blogs and news sites like to attribute their stories
Mashable ran their story hours later after I submitted my news tip on their website early this morning through their Contact Form and via Twitter. And of course, no credit back to Fusible or even TechCrunch who was the first major news site to report it. In fact, all Mashable did was post the same statement that Zynga’s PR group sent to me and other blogs hours after the story had broke – then Mashable tried to call the story their own by not crediting any other news source.
It’s this kind of blogging or news reporting that’s difficult to see, but occurs at a disappointing rate among some of the more mainstream bloggers and news sites — a point brought up by another domain blogger over at Domain Gang in a story titled: We already told you so!
While the post is short, the message is loud. As DomainGang writes bluntly: “Twice in recent days so-called “mainstream blogs” reiterate content we already broke the news for – sometimes with a lapse of one or more weeks”.
I might not always see eye-to-eye with DomainGang who offer a different spin on domain blogging with a dash of humor, but on this matter I most definitely do. It’s not unusual to see breaking stories in the domain industry appear on the popular domain news aggregator Domaining.com over and over and over – with absolutely no mention or credit to the original blogger who broke the story.
As DomainGang simply says: “This comes as no surprise because the focus these days seems to be the regurgitation of news ad nauseam.”
Sure, it’s great to hear opinions by other bloggers, but it’s also good to see credit given to the source.