Matt's Blog

You see it all the time, and almost everywhere. It’s on TV, the Internet and even in stores. Hype. Something that seems almost critical to whether a product launch date is a success or a flop. But, most Hype is Artificial. It’s simply created by companies who want to make their product seem really good. It’s often done when the product is announced, on the Product’s site and when the product is marketed. In today’s world, where news travels fast, this Hype is magnified many times by the news of the products gets posted about, all over the Internet. Of course, Hype isn’t a bad thing, but it needs to be real Hype, not just over-exaggerated “cool” features.

Let’s take the iPhone for example. It’s has huge amounts of Hype. Most of it being Artificial Hype. Yes, the iPhone looks cool, but if you really think about all it is, you’ll get it. It is simply a SmartPhone with a touch-sensitive screen, a few GigaBytes of Memory, a Music/Video player, a modern-looking GUI (Graphical User Interface) and a sleek looking shell. It’s not like any of this is new technology. The Palm Treo has always had a touch-screen, you can buy memory cards with like 8GBs of memory on them, most new phones have a Music player built in (Video’s a little less common, because of battery life), a GUI is a GUI, it can be made however cool, or however lame the company wants it to be and the Shell is also a Shell, it can (and has been this way for a long time) be made however the company wants. So, really, the only Hype should be about a Phone coming with a couple Gigs of Memory and a Video player. Why should there be Hype about the GUI? It’s not like it’s something new. Anyone could’ve made a GUI that looks and works like that, Apple just did it first.

Okay, so I didn’t mean to pick on Apple, or the iPhone. It just happened to be a really good example on Artificial Hype.

Yes, Hype is already defined as excessive publicity, but, Artificial Hype is extremely excessive publicity, which isn’t always truthful.

So, the next time you’re thinking about a buying something that sounds really cool, really think about it, and see if all the Hype about it is actually real, or if it’s Artificial.

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Sorted under Miscellaneous, Rants.