It is very early in the game but it seems to me that both Apple iPad and Google Buzz are ugly puppies. No matter how cute the marketers try to make them look, people just aren’t going to want to cozy up and play with them.
You’d think that these two brilliant product companies would know better. I did. expected more out of an Apple slate and Google’s first real foray into social networking. I’ve even tried to love–or even like- Buzz and the iPad but I don’t.
These are companies whose design teams have understood product simplicity and elegance. They have found demand where conventional wisdom assumed there was none. Yet here they are dragging these ugly puppies to market and they are going to wind up with pee on their feet.
The horridly named iPad seems to me to be no more than a jumbo iPhone, except it doesn’t fit in your pocket and it’s not that good for talking. It’s good for visually impaired people I’m told, but I can see no other compelling use for it. I’ve asked people on Twitter their views and their is little love and less lust for it.
Google Buzz has an appropriate name. Buzz is the last thing that you hear before getting stung and that is what is about to happen to Google with this intrusive first serious foray into social networking.
This product adds nothing to an already crowded market. Those of us who use Gmail and other Google products have no choice to see it because Google has inserted it on our products and makes it nearly impossible to remove.
I can find no consumer need for Buzz. It duplicates functionality in an already crowded market. I suspect its primary purpose was not technical inspiration but a desire for Google to open a new advertising channel.
Why did these two mistakes happen? How could they have been prevented?
Well, they happened in part because success causes arrogance. Development teams start thinking, “Hey we’re Apple. People love our products.” So they develop an unlovable product and figure brand and marketing will push it into the marketplace.
But instead of market acceptance, these two mistakes are going to put big zits on the face of the Apple and Google brands.
They could ave been very easily prevented by having the companies join the conversations of social media just like other companies have done. As cool as Google and Apple seem to be, they are among the most traditional of marketing companies.
If they used social media to ask customers then listen and respond, then expensive mistakes like these would happen less often.
Yeah, yeah, I know. They are public companies and they cannot talk about future products that can impact revenue. The workaround are abundant and so are the case studies.
The bottom line is you can ask people what they think. You can say, if we engineer a puppy that looks like the one above, would you take it home with you.
People will tell you.
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Author Diane Danielson has an excellent post on the role that social media played in Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley for the Massachusetts Senate seat. It reminded me of when I was asked for some social media thoughts on the California presidential primary by some of Hillary Clinton’s pols.
Those talks were filled with a certain smugness on their part, that the California primary was in the bag and their interest in social media was how it could be used to get the word out and contributions in. They looked amused when I used such Gumbaya terminology as “listening to the voters,” demonstrating that you care about what they care about.”
One of them quipped, “Yeah, we’ll just have Hillary sit down an email every Democrat in the state.”
I think Coakley’s loss reflects a certain smugness on her campaign’s part. They presumed they were the heir apparent to the Kennedy throne. They didn’t think Coakley needed to go out and ask the voters what was on their mind. They didn’t need to do what we want people in power to do more than anything else: Listen to us. Stop talking and start listening.
Coakley started later than Scott Brown on Twitter and ended up with fewer than one-fourth of his followers. Brown was more conversational. Whoever was tweeting on his behalf really sounded like him. Whether true or not, he used social media to demonstrate a thread of sharing experience with working class people,with people facing struggles in tough times.
I don’t think this election was won or lost in Twitterville any more than I believe that it was a referendum on Obama or health care. In fact, Massachusetts has the closest thing to universal health care that we have in the US.
Elections are often more complex, more layered and nuanced than pollsters and newsrooms portray them. Sure their are polarized loyalists to one party or another, but increasingly, we vote for people; people we can relate to, people who may see the issues from a similar perspective or with a similar ethic set as we do.
Scott Brown seems to have come across as a more human and accessible candidate, in my view from 3000 miles away. He used social media–along with many other channels– to portray himself that way. Social media did not make the difference but I’m pretty sure it made a difference.
These days, politicians need to be on social media for the same reason that they go to the funerals of famous people. That where the voters are. That’s how they show a human side. That’s where people have access to those who are elected to serve them.
This is a global phenomenon. Elected officials are joining Twitter, not just in the US but in the UK and most recently in Japan. Why? because voters are there in increasing numbers. You can reach more of them faster and at lower cost, but more, much more than that, you can find out what is on their mind.
You can listen and respond and that is really what we want from ut elected officials.
