When hype bites back...A tale of the iPad, Obama and communities

There have been two occasions in the last year in which the Pure360 office saw so many of us being brought together by a phenomenon, causing a few peoples' monitors to gain a magnetic quality, as murmurs and hushes fought it out for audio supremacy as those nearby are drawn into attentive groups by the buzz...

Yep. I'm talking about the live-streamed event.

The first occasion that inspired group huddles, was the landmark event that signified the return of ‘hope to humanity’, as Barack Obama spoke of remaking America in his inauguration speech.
 
And the second such event that saw team bonding in a moment of screen-bound unity?

January's Apple keynote, rumored to mark the launch of the iTablet / iSlate / iPad / iWhatever-engadget-had-guessed-last-week.

Fever pitch

As twitterfeeds intensified with ardent iChatter, and it became apparent that the promised live video streams weren't going to emerge due to the military style connectivity absence in the keynote venue, attention was quickly focused on the tech-blogs posting live snapshots of Steve Jobs (iconic black knitwear and all) leading us mortals into a new dawn by filling our void of lifestyle-changing sofa friendly tech with a beacon of tablet shaped hope...The iPad.<insert suitably dramatic orchestral strings swell>

On the face of it you could draw more than a few parallels to the Obama inauguration. Though they did (bravely) hold back on the bulletproof glass for Steve*.

*Since I've marked nearly each Apple product launch with the ceremonial opening of my wallet and simultaneous diminishing of my bank balance, I'm comfortable with the first name terms.

The 'buts'

But here's where the religious experience (for all but the most devout followers) starts to wear off...

The fabled dual E-Ink and LCD screen doesn't seem to be on the spec list.

Where is the thumbprint reader or facial recognition that lets the iPad recognise and adapt to its user? In fact, hold on. Where's the bloody camera? Even an iPod Nano gets a video camera!? That Operating system looks remarkably similar to my iPhone. Oh, it is iPhone OS.

See Apple have regularly and famously achieved what most brands can only dream about.  A watertight lockdown of any official info pre-product launch combined with an audience that cares so much that the resulting hype sees even rumours about a product's iName trending in their gazillions.  And of course units flying off the shelf when the magical shipping date marked on gadget fan's calendars rolls around... 

But there's one problem

Yes, we live in an increasingly connected and conversational world, where blogs, tweets, forum posts and the like can leverage communities to supercharge the power and width of product hype to light-speed levels, but this power combined with no actual supporting information from a brand means very little control over speculation, so inevitable Chinese-whisperesque chaos ensues.

Bottom line is that those same communities are just as effective at killing a vibe as nurturing it, and let’s face it - there's no hype moderators, no rumour police.

With the recent iPad launch, the past 3 years+ of speculation and inevitably sky-high expectations has seen unparalleled fallout in negative opinion when the curtain was drawn.

From the day after release, "iPad joke" was a more popular search term in some territories than iPad, defective by design's anti iPad petition (I agree BTW, DRM = pretty anti-the spirit of the web) had been signed by thousands, and even the most die hard Apple fanboi had to concede the world was not going to be quite as different a place after March as they'd expected.)

You want beef? I give you beef

Oh, to add my own specific beef to the melting pot of iPad disappointment sharing; building a product down to a low price-point is understandable, commendable even (hurrah for the common man) but then crippling that product with non-expandable memory only to inflate the cost by nearly 50% simply for some more (cheap) built-in storage space?

Umm... No.  Goodbye moral high ground. No deal. Exploitation I cry. FAIL. You get my point.

I digress, back to the biting hype

It's yet to be seen if iPad sales will be influenced more by the positive or negative hype. With Apple's brand power and fan base I suspect it wouldn't be a flop if it was made of cardboard and was powered by mouse blood, but I'm certainly finding watching the whole situation unfold incredibly interesting, especially from my duel consumer/product manager perspective.

How does the old "there's no such thing as bad publicity" adage translate with today's titanic hype vs (community) opinion power struggle?

What happens when hype bites back? I'm looking forward to finding out in this case.  And for what it's worth, March won't be accompanied by the sound of dust escaping from this consumer’s wallet.