One day as I was working on this story, I received an email from TaskRabbit’s vice-president of marketing, Jamie Viggiano. “We saw your recent posting on Craigslist to interview Taskers about their experiences using our service,” she wrote.
Well, that was weird, because I didn’t post anything on Craigslist (although I had posted on a Reddit TaskRabbit forum). “Please know that it is our policy that all journalists work through TaskRabbit Corporate for these requests. We’d be happy to coordinate interviews.”
I’d also reached out to a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford who was studying peer-to-peer economics, with a focus on TaskRabbit. She was willing to talk — until she checked with the company, after which she was not. Viggiano told me she would handle the interview instead.