I'd like to suggest that planned leaks that look like this (ie, an employee making a mistake and announcing/confirming a future product) mostly don't make sense for companies of a certain size/maturity/growth/dominance/culture.
Companies want to be able to shape the message people receive about their products, to highlight good or important points and allay certain fears. Leaks are often bad for that, since it inherently relies on third parties to speculate. Whether it's TechCrunch, New York Times, or Robert Scoble, at least one of them will interpret the information in a way that is detrimental to your interests.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees that you planned it, and you don't take corrective action against the "leaker", you're sending a message that it is okay to be lax about this stuff because there are no consequences. And then you start getting unplanned leaks, which are way worse, since it wouldn't be anything near a carefully crafted perfectly unambiguous planned leak.
If you have a planned leak and you DO tell your employees, then you're going to create a cynical bunch of people, which will hurt productivity and creativity. And they'll tell people about the planned leaks, and you'll lose a lot of credibility (which hurts hiring as well). And they'll start leaving, which is a really heavy cost.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees (or, even worse, deny it) and you're found out to have done so, you're in an even worse situation.
Companies want to be able to shape the message people receive about their products, to highlight good or important points and allay certain fears. Leaks are often bad for that, since it inherently relies on third parties to speculate. Whether it's TechCrunch, New York Times, or Robert Scoble, at least one of them will interpret the information in a way that is detrimental to your interests.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees that you planned it, and you don't take corrective action against the "leaker", you're sending a message that it is okay to be lax about this stuff because there are no consequences. And then you start getting unplanned leaks, which are way worse, since it wouldn't be anything near a carefully crafted perfectly unambiguous planned leak.
If you have a planned leak and you DO tell your employees, then you're going to create a cynical bunch of people, which will hurt productivity and creativity. And they'll tell people about the planned leaks, and you'll lose a lot of credibility (which hurts hiring as well). And they'll start leaving, which is a really heavy cost.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees (or, even worse, deny it) and you're found out to have done so, you're in an even worse situation.
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