It’s amazing how much unfounded gossip there is about the fact that Steve Jobs might reveal the iphone 2 on June 9th. One of the first „solid“ rumours I saw was at Gizmodo. Since then, new rumours, hints and other gossip has increased.
I subscribed to an RSS Newsfeed of Google News with the keyword iphone. There is so much happening, it’s amazing. If apple had tried to construct a viral or word of mouth campaign around the iphone, they couldn’t have done a better job than the web just did. Or may be they did help spreading the word?
Jobs‘ secretive computer and gadget company, has been quietly positioning millions of units of a mysterious new product—almost certainly the new iPhone—in key markets since March. And yet, incredibly, not one credible image of Apple’s new product has yet been published.
[…] One clue: Jobs began racking up serious mileage on his corporate jet during the company’s final quarter of 2007, as he likely finalized deals with distribution partners in Europe and Asia, and perhaps scrutinized the first 3G iPhone handsets to come from his partners‘ factories. Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty was the first to spot the enormous jump in Jobs‘ airplane expenses—to $550,000 from $203,000 during the previous quarter.
[…] By May 6, it became clear that AT&T was getting ready for something big, with a blogger publishing an all-hands memo to employees at AT&T stores telling them they couldn’t take vacation time between June 15 and July 12. That news hit amid widespread reports of iPhone shortages in Europe and across the U.S.
With all the clues, hints and gossip around the web, it appears to be like a giant world wide scavenger hunt. The whole setup and effect should be every marketers dream (and every ad agencys dilemma, since less or no advertising will be needed for the launch). Once the product itself carries viral potential, it automatically triggers word of mouth. The iphone is a classic example of this.
PS: if all goes well, I will be owning an iPhone 2 by next week 😉
Fixed price models were a thing of the last 100 years – now we all thought that auction platforms like ebay would revert to variable price models. Not so. Even worse: ebay might have been a fad, argues Nick Carr, citing an article of business week.
Auctions were once a pillar of e-commerce. People didn’t simply shop on eBay. They hunted, they fought, they sweated, they won. These days, consumers are less enamored of the hassle of auctions, preferring to buy stuff quickly at a fixed price.
In fact, fixed price is gaining ground:
At the current pace, this may be the first year that eBay generates more revenue from fixed-price sales than from auctions, analysts say. „The bloom is well off the rose with regard to the online-auction thing,“ says Tim Boyd, an analyst with American Technology Research. „Auctions are losing a ton of share, and fixed price has been gaining pretty steadily.“
With users increasingly being able to research prices online, the need for speculating at an auction site decreases. At some point it’s pretty clear what a gadget should cost – so why bother bidding in an auction in which probably everyone has the same knowledge about the likely price ceiling? Why not buy it right away somewhere else?
Interesting thought: decreasing information assymetry will lead to an increase in fixed price deals (online, where things are comparable within a mouse click). Make sense, somehow.
The concept behind these types of services is that by letting users suggest ideas and vet them via a community voting process, you’ll be left with only the ideas that your most loyal customers really want – and that these are things that are most likely to succeed in the marketplace.
The idea is basically the same as for „my starbucks idea„, „dell ideastorm“ or even „tchibo ideas“ (in Germany). Everybody can submit an idea, users then vote on the ideas, comment&discuss, etc. Apparently, the idea was born out of necessity, but I don’t quite fathom why people might think that Obama has not reached out to the online audience sufficiently enough (as it says in this article).
While I think he does well using all these social media tools, his new platform has one critical flaw as a commenter to one of my previous posts on this type of crowd sourcing noted: the same way users can see the new ideas (and vote&comment), so can his political opponents. And the might see in which direction his campaign topics could be targeted.
Nevertheless, I sometimes wish German politicians would increasingly use these tools…
Adverblog found this musical prang of lastminute.com which promotes their last minute ticket service for theatres (I think).
As nice as the idea appears, it is (as it often happens in advertising) not a very new idea. May it’s the first time, the idea was used in a commercial. But on YouTube, there are videos of the „prangstgrup“ that date back to August of 2006! See this clip here:
You can see a company logo in this clip several times, but it is not too obvious. Only once you see this clip, you get a URL that provides more info about who’s behind it:
Once you visit the website mentioned at the end of this clip, you can see it’s done by Allianz, a German insurance company. It’s nicely done, but I am still surprised to see an insurance company go through all this effort to show their logo. But since it’s very entertaining, I won’t ask any more questions 😉
It’s amazing how much unfounded gossip there is about the fact that Steve Jobs might reveal the iphone 2 on June 9th. One of the first „solid“ rumours I saw was at Gizmodo. Since then, new rumours, hints and other gossip has increased.
Wo ich sonst so bin...