Comments on: Data is golddust

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:29:12 +0000

Piaras … great post. To me, the big issue surrounding SoaP was purely about hype, and about the desire of some vocal bloggers to drive a movie’s success so they could crow about the importance of social media.

SoaP may indeed turn out to be a cult favorite — a la Rocky Horror Picture Show or something — but then again, campy cult classics aren’t something that the Internet generation created.

The other issue to me that we should all learn from SoaP is that you can’t create viral interest. You can help it along when it happens, but those instances where people get excited about something like a movie are rare.

By: fmk

fmk — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:21:13 +0000

snakes on a plane is an interesting test case - my view would be that, in the us, too many people knew about it. it’s been a story for far too long. the story of it being the-script-the-internet-wrote had grown tired by the time the film was released. the hype has also had the effect of hyping the financial expectations for the film - a 30m film taking 15m in its opening weekend isn’t bad. it shows the film will more than make a profit. but, given the hype, its a pretty piss-poor profit.

over this side of the atlantic though, the hype started much, much later. the internet is less a part of mainstream media, and so the whole snakes story wasn’t part of the mainstream for as long as it has been in the us. the hype peaked perfectly with the release of the film itself, and worked - people went to see it.

now if only the ryder cup promo whores could learn the lesson of this story and shut the feck up about their golf shindig …

btw the dell suggestion sounds too much like the banks’ decisions to jetison their personal account holders as they were the ones costing the bank the most and generating the least amount of revenue. v bad pr, but then, that’s banking for you. yes, dell have been having a pretty rough year. competitors have caught up on the supply-chain and logistics management savings. dell has taken hits over its ads and its terms and conditions. and, of course, there’s the exploding batteries 9which are actually sony batteries, but dell take the hit). saying retreat from the consumer market actually sounds like a scared pr going “oh my god, we can’t possibly handle this, ever!”

By: Paul O Mahony

Paul O Mahony — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:16:10 +0000

“Shoppers make last-minute purchases 45 percent less often when they use automated checkout machines”
Thats a good thing, isn’t it? Less rotting teeth. Less waiting around. Why not reinvest the savings in checkout salaries into more imaginative product lines, instead of worrying about the drop in impulse purchases. Alot of people don’t like the way shops manipulate customers with sweets at checkout and so on?

By: Damien Mulley

Damien Mulley — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:31:26 +0000

Snakes on a plane made 15Million so far. It’s a total b movie. There are plenty of Sam Jackson movies that have much much less with way better scripts. It’s the Internet nerds version of Rocky Horror.