Okay, felt the need to insert comments here. Only doing it once and will not respond to anything else as this stuff has eaten up way too much of my life in the past.
We are NOT trying to pose as HARO, we have NEVER tried to pose as HARO.
This is a tweet from Peter's Twitter profile: "Sweet! Just grabbed some new domain names to redirect to HARO - use whichever ones you want - haro.net, reportersource.com and tons more. :)3:00 PM May 21st from TweetDeck"

So why are we being blamed for "taking Peter's name" or "trying to pose as HARO"? We shouldn't be. He took our name minus an S and directed it to his site after we'd already been in business for several months. That's smart and not a problem for us, we're still growing, but I won't be accused of doing something that HE actually did to us! His own words on his Twitter account clearly show that!
That's all I'm sayin' :-)
Cheers,
Stephanie
ReportersSource.com

You guys are both right. Leveraging the domain name of a competitor is tasteless at best. They are trying to get traffic based off misspelling. Like a domain squatter...no one likes them

Ugh...didn't even realize they were doing all that! Very unethical! Not to mention useless! - Why would I waste my time writing up a pitch if I didn't even know that it would get to the journalist?! Who are they to say which pitches the journalists want to receive?

Anyway, consider yourself added to the blogroll. Don't take it personally that you weren't on there - I haven't updated it recently :)

I'm more than happy to deal with competition. Heck, when I started, Profnet was the big kid on the block and I was new. Now I'm 75k members strong, 6x the size of Profnet (we'll never really know because they don't make their numbers public.)

But the real problem I have with reporterssource is that they're playing God. They try and play it down, but THEY CHOOSE which pitches THEY SEND to the reporter. In other words, there's ZERO transparency. If they don't like ANYTHING about your pitch, they delete it. If and only if they like it, they consider sending it to the reporter. That's crap. It's unfair to you the PR person, it's demeaning as HELL to the journalist. It's not transparent, and in my opinion, is unethical. What if they say "oh, yeah, we sent those to the reporter and well, he chose to use our client?" How do we know?

It's icky.

Or, as I said earlier, "ew."

The competition part doesn't bother me at all.

Thanks for the note, Nicole! Now why the heck isn't shankman.com on your blogroll? :)

-Peter

I understand where you are coming from...since HARO is the brand itself and reportersource.com is just another method of getting traffic to the HARO site. However, I still feel like there are millions of potential domains out there that aren't one letter off a domain being used by HARO. It could be that I work at a marketing firm with lots of creative types - but I would assume you would want to take a second to come up with a CREATIVE name for your service as opposed to one that sounds VERY similar to your competitor. Competition is about differentiation and building your OWN brand, not piggybacking off one someone else built...

Ya he shouldn't rip off the name. That's a low blow to try and get traffic based on his HARO brand. But maybe I am mistaken (seriously not trying to be sarcastic) but just because Peter owns a domain name thats related to HARO, it doesnt mean the 'rip off' is trying to copy helpareporter.com. I mean his brand is HARO or helpareporter. Does it also include reportersource and sourcereporter and every adaptation of finding sources for reporters? I would be mad if they intentionally bought the domain helpareporterout.net and tried to piggy back off the name. helpareporter doesnt = reportersource or whatever the name was. The concept is the same...

I also have no problem with competition. I agree it makes things better. HOWEVER, the HARO rip-off was completely trying to pose as HARO (notice the similarities in the web addresses?) It's fine if you want to compete...but there's a difference between competition and ripping someone off...

I have a real problem with the idea that someone else using an idea is ripping them off (with the story that you linked to above). Competition is natural and HARO should be happy that his success has caused others to want a piece of the pie. You should read the comments on that post. There are many accounts in history and innovation where the inventor didnt make the best product/service, it was the 'rip offs' that did better. Its an evolution sometimes. But I do have a problem with people abusing the system and spamming it for their own gain. That is not cool and should not be tolerated on any level on any service. And BTW, I dont have any affiliation with the 'rip off', HARO, or PRweb...

Having said that, I have tried to create a similar service called findasource.org and plan to improve on Shankman's idea. I am currently building a expert list and will institute a better matching system than HARO currently has (maybe I shouldnt have said that, oh no its a secret, its an idea, oh no maybe he will take it). Will I get backlash from it? I guess we will see, but I think its horrible to think I would be shunned and immediately labeled a thief for improving the idea. I guess that's the same backlash when reddit 'copied' digg...but listen to what really happened in an interview the other day with the owner: http://mixergy.com/no-reddit-didnt-copy-digg-he...

Just my 2 cents. And its not because I am another 'rip off' I am saying this. Competition only breeds better things, and with the ease to start an internet company, you better bet that 'rip offs' will be plenty :)