Some short time ago a company, which shares it’s brand mark with a well known boy-group from England, which in turn has led to some very interesting developments and lawsuits, has announced a very slim internet browsing device.

Quickly everyone else announced that they were making one, too. The news sites, the blogs, the forums and even the television were providing coverage all over, making it impossible not to know about this new device. Leading people all over the world to announce, whether they loved or hated this device and about their avid intentions to buy it.

Or not.


Anyway, this journal entry is not about the device.

This is instead about an interesting phenomena. This phenomena is commonly called the internet echo chamber. It its though, in close relation to aforementioned events. Let’s think about this:

Now, when you consider the fact that it is indeed close to impossible to escape the news about Apple’s iPad. (There I said it.) That raises some interesting questions about the marketing mechanism internet.

For example, as people get polarized they usually write blog entries or even articles anticipating the device, detailing what they are going to do with it. Even so, if the functionality they write about, is imagined, or has not been disclosed. On the other side of the spectrum, there will be people deriding the device listing it’s perceived — or real faults in sometimes objective, or completely rambling, but usually entertaining, fashion.

The interesting thing is, that even negative articles, about an device which, mind you, is not even available to the general public, yet seem to further the hype machine, as more and more people read these articles and either agree or disagree, thus feeling compelled to release their own perceptions into the community. Thus repeating- and speeding up the perpetual cycle.

This has happened before, with the iPhone. But, from my perception, never on this level. It looks like the hype and anticipation for this device, in the midst of a recession, seems unparalleled. Which prompts the question:

How did Apple achieve this?

My guess is as good as anybody else’s, but I would wager it has something to do with the, from a marketing standpoint, amazingly well executed pre-presentation, or pre-launch. Then this trickles down to the Apple core members, the company’s most devout following comprised from hardcore Apple fans and employes, which will then, themselves, tirelessly promote the new product. From there it will quickly spread through the ranks of people, who use Apple products and “kind of like it”, to the outliers, your regular Joe Average consumer.

Now, it would be interesting to know, how this company managed to create and maintain such a cult following. But this is a blog entry for another time.