August 2009
“EVERY Wednesday, Lee Clow, the creative director of TBWA/Chiat/Day, travels from Los Angeles to Cupertino, Calif., for his weekly meeting with Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive.”
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This little nugged was buried in the NYTimes puff piece on Microsoft’s newfound advertising tone.
Side-note: it’s hard to care about the woes of the NYTimes and the “Death of Journalism” when it runs blatant PR pieces like these. (Via NYTimes.com)
Michael Jackson's Death Saves Magazines →
businessinsider.com
Tributes and special issues have generated an additional $55 million in newsstand sales. However, if there’s anything we learned about Jackson and the music biz it’s that a single-handed savior can’t last for long.
Play
Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3 →
pcpro.co.uk
“In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you.”
Where does the Internet End? →
jackmyers.com
I elaborated on an old post for the company blog:
Neither Virgin nor CompUSA’s markets disappeared. Rather, they just shifted into the blurry edge of the net. Their continued existence (and vitality) can be seen across the street from Virgin, at the Apple Store. Here, the Macs once sold at CompUSA are gateways to iTunes, which sells every bit of content Virgin once housed.
…
Apple understands how to balance on the edge of the Internet. The store is dedicated to tactile and personal interactions with high-ticket items that generally aren’t purchased by consumers online: MacBooks, iPhones, iPods, etc. Everything else Apple sells is sold online through the high-ticket items catered to in-store. It’s a perfectly balanced ecosystem. Each channel drives the other..
All of this is immensely successful: according to Bloomberg, Apple increased revenue at its stores by 2.5 percent in the first six months of this year, to a grand total of $3 billion. Sales for the rest of the retail industry, however, fell 9.2%. Digitally, Apple can’t be touched: NPD estimates iTunes accounts for 25% of all the music sold in the US and 69% of all digital music total.
*Gratuitous Self Link Thursday (GSLT)
“Does that sound scary to you, imagining a world in which any developer can just publish an app to your little touch screen computer without Apple’s saintly reviewers scrubbing it of all evil first? Well, it shouldn’t, because there is this thing called the World Wide Web which already works that way, and it has served millions and millions of people quite well for a long time now.”
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Joe Hewitt, the developer of Facebook’s iPhone app.
Getting slammed with Farmville invites and uninspired quiz results is something I’d rather my phone not do.
Business Insider Backpedals →
businessinsider.com
After being called-out by Tumblr and their users, Business Insider steps back from the claims they made in a previous hit piece. A piece written without any sourcing beyond a quick Compete chart.
Honestly, their piece was absurd. To start, they qualified success as Twitter, and measured said success using uniques. The only people worrying about uniques (without context) are the self-proclaimed “gurus” on Twitter and link-baiting bloggers. Give me time-spent, participation, content creation and user passion… metrics that Tumblr owns. When I recommend sites, uniques only get you in the door. Engagement proves your worth.
The piece is even more ridiculous when you consider that Business Insider probably has twice the staff of Tumblr and only ~900k unique according to Compete. By their own standards, BI is flailing.
