The last few days have been gripped by the iPad hysteria..as WSJ aptly put it "Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it". To me what was really fascinating was the way Social Media played a pivotal..no..an almost all-pervasive role in building and feeding the hysteria.
Harken back to the days of iPhone launch..people were beginning to see the potential of crowd sourcing..it was more of a consumption pattern..news was being published by few quarters and consumed by many..Product leaks even if present did not worm their way into main stream consciousness..ergo when the man in Levis and black turtleneck took center stage to say they were launching 3 new devices..rolled into one..and you could control it with your pinkie!! It was total mayhem..the market knew Apple would launch a phone but something of this revolutionary proportions!! Not a fat chance..Apple's love for secrets and Jobs's showmanship had one upped the market.
Fast forward to late 2009, the eReader market is heating up with B&N entering the fray with the Nook to compete with the Kindle. The market is agog with the expectations of Apple launching a tablet based eBook reader. Product leaks come in thick and fast, with spyshots, potential spec leakage and people scouring the patent filings for potential clues of what the fabled tablet can do. The information is not only flowing in from nondescript quarters but is also being furiously propagated by the foragers. Leechers became Providers!!
2 days before the launch, Engadget ran this article and Gizmodo ran this snippet and everyone new what the tablet was going to be..(There were some good and bad surprises though, Apples A4 processor, the smart pricing structure and no contract 3G..no multitasking, no camera and no option for note taking!!)
News networks like CNN, WSJ and NYTimes relied on crowd sourced non authenticated data to publish speculative articles about the iPad..Were they crazy to do so?? Is this good journalism?? Most importantly is this the future?? Yes, Yes and YES!! It is simple statistics..it is truth in numbers and democratization of information..old schoolers can choose align with it and evolve or debunk it and perish..
So what does this mean for Apple and companies who have similar strategies?? On the positive side, for Apple it was a lot of hype and marketing at no extra cost. They have struck the eBook market when its hot and delivered to market expectations. Most importantly, they have earned a 60 - 90 day respite when they will fall back on their SVP iPhone Software, Scott Forstall, to come up with iPhone OS 4.0. I am speculating here that it will have multitasking and other nice bits which will make the iPad suddenly a must buy..time will tell..
On the flip side, with Apple aligning with more than one vendor (product components, manufacturing, content partnership, software development, etc.) on products such as iPad, maintaining a leak free ship is becoming increasingly hard. Ergo, the flash and awe effect is harder to achieve in its product launch. Is it time for Apple to rethink its secrecy strategy?? Maybe..
One a final note, someone in class asked the question..what is social media??
One version of the answer : It is a medium for contributing to and querying the larger social intelligence. It is a mechanism/ protocol by which multiple singleton twines of intelligence collude to form a thick strand of knowledge/ consciousness. Sounds like a line from a self help book dosent it?? :) But think about it..it actually is that..As a stand alone person you are limited by the amount of information you can absorb and recover. You use appendages like books, dairies, computers to store your information but again recovery and comprehension is limited by individual potential. Now look at a collection of people..coalesce them as one single entity..now imagine possibilities..that is social media..to me..
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