Microsoft's marketing mavens are at it again. At what, I'm not sure. This new Zune commercial might be cute and cuddly, and according to this TechCrunch article, the quote is that the commercial is aimed at "the cultural core, the key influencers in society that pay attention to this kind of art." But well it sell any Zunes? I doubt it.
Oh, my. Chirs Pirillo cracks me up on a pretty regular basis. But this one is pretty funny. A video of what happens when an iPod and a Zune have sex. If visions of the usage of the word "squirt" come to mind, you need to see this.
Dave Ciccone calls this Zune ad the worst commercial ever. I don't think he's far off.
With all of the back and forth on the very interesting discussion about a new MP3 player dedicated to podcasts, Dave Winer links to this:
Bret Fausett: "If we all started calling those MP3s we send over the RSS feeds Zunecasts, how long do you think it would take Apple to retract its trademark claims on podcasting?
Heh.
So, an idea is bouncing around that recently unemployed Jason Calacanis, Peter Rojas, and Dave Winer should fire up a start-up to develop a DRM free MP3 player targeted at the podcast market (yeah only at that, sure.) Michael Gartenberg blogged a list of things that should be included. Rojas says he's game. Whether it comes to be or not, it will be fun to watch.
So did Bill Gates toss down a gauntlet in the MP3 player wars or not? In an interview prior to the big launch of Vista and Office 2007 with Kevin Maney of USA Today, Gates said,
"If Apple said any song on the iPod could be played on Zune, we’d say the same thing. Because they have such a high market share, they’re not interested in interoperability, but that’s too bad."
Don't count on the gauntlet being picked up any time soon.
Microsoft's Zune has been released and the negative reactions have out polled the positive from what I've read so far. But by far one of the most vicious and also most informative negative reviews I have read comes from the Chicago Sun-Times. Andy Ihantako's, Avoid the Looney Zune, lays out a number of issues including installation issues, software issues, and others. I have to agree that the support info about fixing the install issue seems more than anyone would want to bear. Let's not even talk about the fact that the initial release is not supported by Vista RTM at the moment. (Not really a killer deal at the moment, but enough to build a bunch of bad PR.)
I dole out smacks to Marketing Mavens all the time for what I perceive as idiotic moves. Here's another one. Whoever came up with "Squirting" as the label for sharing songs between Zune players and actually thinks this will survive the "coolness test" among the younger set, obviously needs to spend some time with teenagers. I asked several kids in our current Christmas show cast about this yesterday. First, only one had even heard of Zune. Second, when I asked them what they thought of the squirting feature, the label was met with looks of derision and peals of laughter. Certainly not scientific, by any means. But telling.
Much has been made, by way of excuses, that this is a first generation product and it will only get better. Great. But given the UMPC like reaction to the Zune so far, Microsoft really needs to think twice about foisting Beta hardware on the world. Sure they've got the bankroll to make this a long term strategy, but it sure can't help future advances if you have to overcome being a bad joke with each new release. I'd hazard a guess that Zune will end up on some end of the year worst lists within the next few weeks.
Lots of stuff flying around about Microsoft's Zune with the release today. I just caught TDavid's unboxing video. Definitely worth a look see if you're interested in this device. Nice side by side with the iPod. It will be interesting to see what else he discovers. I still can't decide if I want to go the dedicated media player or just pick up a UMPC for music.
Especially if what Mary Jo Foley is reporting is true.
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