&gt;<i>Well played. You took a dying app, and managed to bring it back onto the radar by spinning a story that has nothing to do with the app itself.</i><p>It&#x27;s a story about the launch of the app, the reactions to it and its course in the app charts.<p>It doesn&#x27;t get any much more about &quot;the app itself&quot; -- except if by that you mean he should only be allowed to review the app and&#x2F;or write about its feature specs, menus and gradients used in the UI...<p>&gt;<i>There must be some sort of pro version of the Hype Cycle circulating in the Valley. &quot;Okay marketeers, we need to begin the &#x27;underdog&#x27; portion of our marketing campaign. If that doesn&#x27;t work, then we may need to engineer a scandal to boost traffic&quot;.</i><p>I don&#x27;t see any iota of proof (or even a hint) that he wrote the story to build hype about the app.<p>This accusation borders on tin foil conspiracy theories...