Industry Note - Special How Not to Talk to Consumers Edition
Apparently Zune's message is:
"Welcome to the Social".
Notwithstanding the fact that it's maybe a bit of a ripoff (since the only person that actually says "the social" on a regular basis, apart from grungy old academics, is uhhh...me), it's a cool idea.
The problem is it's expressed terribly.
"The social" is a phrase I use to sum up tons of academic work on the economics, psychology, and anthropology of, well, social interaction.
It means little to consumers - esp the consumers Zune wants to reach; because those guys are already
bathed in the hypersocial.
Zune (for God's sake) isn't gonna
welcome them to the social - they've already been living hypersociality - 10,000 friends on Myspace, 50-60 texts a day, Habbo, Neopets, Stardoll, Last.fm, etc, etc, etc - for years.
So this positioning is, I think, more of the same - yesterday's arrogance of money and market power.
Unfortunately, today, these kinds of positions today inevitably signal to consumers what
not to buy - because, in fact, they're a pretty accurate signal just how out of touch the guys behind the product (and the marketing) really are with connected consumption, etc, etc.
NB - It might seem, esp to the geek kru,like I'm nitpicking, but this kind of stuff makes the difference between branding that talks to consumers, and branding that just gets tuned out.
Firefox 2.0
I hate u.
Why have tabs suddenly become *such* a pain to use (if, like me, you tend to have like 8000 open at once)? Why can't I figure out how to allow popups if I want? What's with the new yet unimproved look?
Sorry to harsh on you guys, but I can't figure out where I benefit from not using 1.5.