January 29, 2007
After spotting today’s news of Verizon’s decision to reject an approach from Apple to be the carrier for the iPhone, I jumped over to Techmeme to look for some analysis and found – well, pretty much nothing of any interest. Kedrosky had some interesting comments, but pretty much everything else I’ve read on this story today has sizzle and no steak – big headlines, but content that does nothing other than repeat basic facts…. There are certainly many more voices, but just about everyone is doing nothing more than copying facts from the MSM, and then wrapping it in a sugary “It will be interesting to see what happens next” coating. And once again, the lingering impression I have after looking to the ‘tropolis for analysis is that I’m wasting my time.We should be able to do better than this.Story angles: – is this story just Verizon spin, put out there in an attempt to take a free shot at competitors?
Onward →
January 29, 2007
After the recent brouhaha over public relations in a Web 2.0 world, I couldn’t help but note a couple of recent moments that illustrated for me the occasional jarring disconnects one encounters between reality and the way some seek to present it.The first was Dick Cheney’s recent festival of fantasy with Wolf Blitzer. Cheney’s increasingly common “Baghdad Bob” moments are beginning to attract more laughter than anything else – but they are still proof, as though we needed it, that Government – how does one say this – frequently seeks to create distance between truth and the public’s perception of it.The second was Bill Gates’ efforts to lean into the spin on early reports of the Vista launch – an effort cheerily assisted by an obliging AP that ensured that webpages everywhere would contain headlines with the words “Gates”, “Vista” and “Wow” – an impression once again some considerable distance from reality, at least based on the many early reports that have trickled out these past few weeks.Reminders – once again, as though we needed them – that there are many more people and much more money invested in broadcasting – um – creative impressions of reality – than there are aligned against that effort, and that hopes that Web 2.0 culture or technology will inject more authenticity into messaging – whether delivered by PR, advertising or anything else – are misplaced.
Onward →