“You know pretty quickly, and in a very public way, whether a product is successful or not,” said Mr. Hilwa.

Similar to opening week at the movies, early reviews on the Web panning a new tablet or phone can be disastrous for its makers.

This New York Times piece makes the case for its title conclusion. My question is: does this also apply to software releases?

Does Techcrunch have the same sort of promoting power with web startups that Pitchfork has with music? How does software get that elusive traction that gives them the initial userbase needed to succeed in the long-term? How much harder is it to pivot a hardware venture versus a software venture, and is there a chance for smaller startups to enter the hardware game? Fusion Garage's JooJoo tablet didn’t have that early success. We’ll see how their recently-released “Grid” systems sell.