Slashdot Mirror
Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool?"
TobyToadstool writes "With the recent news that NBC and News Corp. will launch a YouTube rival, CNet asks: Can big corporations buy the zeitgeist or will they inevitably screw up? CNet calls the new wannabe 'Me Too Tube.' The article looks at companies trying to buy their way into user-generated content. Quoting: 'There is something incredibly boring and sad about giant companies who constantly chase the fleeing tailcoats of the latest Internet trends. Like the kid who [leaned] over and copied you in art class, News Corp./NBC are the archetypal corporation — lumbering and so very uncool.'"
....but like them or not (and I don't), News Corporation own MySpace; and yes, they succeeded in buying "cool" there.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Is YouTube cool? I thought it was just a convenient place to post and watch videos.
The NBC/News Corp. site will be a convenient place to watch NBC and FOX television shows. Who cares if it is "cool"?
CNET's never going to become cool if they miss the far snappier monkier of "Mee-toob"!
Remember when Viacom tried to buy cool with MTV?
This just allows them to make reality television shows without doing *any* work. Personally I've never been a fan of reality TV, and I only used youTube to watch Charlie Murphys True Hollywood Stories :)
Procrastinators, Unite Tomorrow!
Seriously. What the fuck would you knobs know about cool?
You probably think it's uncool because it isn't compatible with firefox for unga bunga linux or dragonfire BSD.
NBC and NewsCorp have tons of content people want access too. They will be successful, whether you like it or not, or whether it gets the tag of "cool" from a bunch of geeks.
YouTube cool? Whats so cool about some fat kids video diary?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Of course they can, just look at Apple.
They have an uncanny ability to enter an established market with a "cool" product and trample over the competition.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
In fact, companies aren't really cool. At best, companies make good products and get a good reputation and then people decide that their products are cool (like Apple), but if you actively chase being "cool", then you end up looking foolish.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Big Media outlets don't care if it is as successful as You-Tube or not. All they care about is keeping their content off of You-Tube. It only needs to be a success in that manner; meaning that it succeeds in if people want their content, they'll go to their site where ad revenue can be recouped, not somewhere else.
Only way it "fails" is if people still don't want to access the content in that manner, not whether it obtains some vauge "coolness" factor.
It is and never was a direct competitor. Only the talking heads in the media claimed such.
As far as I can tell, big corporations have almost always historically "bought the zeitgeist." Perhaps it is "uncool," but why should they care? They aren't teenagers, they are businesses. They are quite frequently unchilled all the way to the bank, which is their ultimate goal anyway.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
According to 99% of corporate marketing consultants just take whatever your message is and make it into a rap!
Learning is fun! "I to learn, it's my style. I'm quiet in class and I always smile." *boom shika boom*
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Does that make them uncool?
Of course they can buy it and I will be happy to sell it to them.
You can't buy cool. Cool is something you define personally. It's entirely subjective and based on whim. Corporations do business by trying to understand and meet other people's needs. If a corporation is trying to buy 'cool', they are trying to guess what someone else will think is cool. You will never guess correctly. The 'coolness' you are trying to buy becomes an imitation of what some corporate decision makers think Gen-Xers will think is cool, which is not coolness. Cool has an 'is-ness', a zen-like quality that can't be defined. If you are trying to be, then by definition, you are not cool. You are a wanna-be.
You can argue that the kind of cynical, postmodern, commercial/corporate kitch can be cool , but I say again, as long as something is being what it is, rather than trying to be something else to impress someone, then it is cool. If they are consciously going with corporate/commercial kitch with awareness, and embracing it, then they are being cool, being themselves. If they are inadvertently creating corporate wanna-be-cool kitch without awareness, then that is trying, which is not cool.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
In all honesty, who cares what CNet (or anyone else) has to say about these new sites? Does this mean that everyone who put up a website for any reason after the first one went up should have been labeled "My Website Too"?
Once again we're going to see a catfight over technology being brought down to the same level as fashion.
My advice for real geeks: shrug it off. Or do you want to be part of what is slightly above a Montel Williams show?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Most assuredly "cool" can be bought. I learned that from when Homer played the voice of Poochie on the Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie show.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sorry, I'm not for sale.
Those that do not will die.
This is very difficult for companies that are used to filtering your culture and promoting only a small subset, which they consider exemplary. That kind of cynicism can be seen back as far as the Beatles "Hard Day's Night" where a company follows the advice of their "resident teenager". In a world where original content can and does come from everywhere, big companies are going to have to get used to being one of many equal players. Those that do will be cool by definition. Those that don't will increasingly become keepers of legacy and irrelevant entertainment, kind of like museums.
Cool is like stupid. Stupid is what stupid does. Both become apparent in time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The same goes for any brand or buying a small development company or whatever.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
it's just that it WORKS and you don't have to jump through any stupid hurdles.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
World of Warcraft? Does Blizzard count?
Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool?"
Of course they can! A good example is the entertainment industry's Captain Copyright!
Why, if that doesn't make little Timmy stop downloading his Metallica MP3s, then by golly nothing will! Captain Copyright is totally fresh!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No, see... The cool kid didn't care enough to notice somebody leaning over and copying. They just went on making cool stuff.
Can a large corporation con the patent office into issuing them a patent for Coolness?
Sadly, the answer is probably yes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The rich buy cool so that they can file infringement lawsuits against the cool people.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. Embrace cool by buying it. Extend cool by accessorizing. Extinguish cool because only rich people can afford to accessorize.
Hustlers exist solely through charity. I see their scams, lies, and deceit: I'm too charitable to outright shoot them.
TMZ.com is a pretty popular (maybe cool) site that is fully owned by aol. If they can pull it off, anyone can.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
slashdot is something much more bigger than you think.
...
/. is the place where majority of people who build the web and tech world hang out - not excluding high level techies, executives, prominent tech pioneers, industry celebrities, very high profile personas, ages-old black & white hat hackers with long list of deeds behind them. ah, also a number of politicians.
you are probably thinking that who are hanging out in slashdot are a bunch of long haired geeks in their mom's basement and half lit university labs. along with a couple of linux, ms and nasa junkies
reality is that
not to mention countless hordes of developers & programmers, whose collective mind decides the fate of programming languages, numerous software and hardware products, and even ideas, for the future.
ever wondered why there are so many anonymous posts in slashdot ? only for trolling better ? afraid of persecution ?
think again.
Read radical news here
"There is something incredibly boring and sad about giant companies who constantly chase the fleeing tailcoats of the latest Internet trends"
Just like how Google bought YouTube
"Can Large Corporations Buy 'Cool?'"
We all know Google did
The summary asks two questions. Can corporations buy cool, and will they inevitably mess it up. The answer to both questions is yes.
Of COURSE they can buy cool. All that requires is that you identify a cool idea, and then pay for it.
The problem is that this isn't the workflow inside these corporations. They identify a cool idea, then they bastardize it, then they fund the bastard child of the good idea, and their idea. Their idea is generally crafted in order to fit with their corporate image. But their corporate image is part of the problem! Aside from the time when Yuppies were the people to look up to, Corporate has never been cool, and never will be cool.
This is because corporations are psuedo-entities that have only their own interests in mind. They will always be running from liability, and to protect their assets under copyright law, patent law, trademark law, et cetera.
Now as others have pointed out, MySpace is the one and only example of buying cool. But you will note that MySpace users don't give a fuck about who owns MySpace, so actually, it's not an example of buying cool. It's an example of paying for cool without actually having it transfer over to the corporate owner. MySpace owners simply do not give a fuck that it's owned by MySpace. They care that they can make horribly ugly web pages and tell everyone about the hairstyle they gave to their rat dog.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Of course a big corporation can buy cool! The only question is who you pay. The answer is "your consumers," not "your stockholders." Spend money making an innovative product and go out of your way to be helpful instead of *trying* to make a cool product and going out of your way to cut costs and max profits... and you have a good chance at being "cool."
Of course, it is kinda hard for a big corporation to survive while thinking of its consumers wants over the bottom line, but then nobody said it was easy to be cool.
Of course, you could try to buy something that is already cool (google buying youtube and such) but that doesn't make *you* cool... you could brand your logo everywhere and/or try to change something so that it is "you" instead of "the thing you bought" that is "cool" but more likely you'll ruin a perfectly good thing and people will think you even less "cool."
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
They can't buy cool. They _can_ earn it. IBM has gone a complete and total change over the last 20 years. Nintendo has over the last four.
The coolness has to come from within.
You need to make it clearly better. People are already using youTube. Why should they switch? Most people I know use MSN messenger. Is it the best? Probably not, but all my friends use it. The other options aren't sufficiently better to make any of us want to swap.
Surely they realise this. Are the marketting suits really that stupid?
Is this rhetorical? Hasn't microsoft successfully been doing "me too" for decades?
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
And the answer is: no, you can't buy cool
.. to go by, no. Remember how badly All I want for Christmas is a PSP was? I don't think they'll ever get any better at it than that.
The reason youtube is cool is because it has lots of cool content. Content that the big companies do not want you to have. Old concert footage, obscure scenes from movies, lots of cool clips that are not rubber stamped for release by the media companies. NBC and other media corps don't want you to have access to this cool video. They want you to watch the same old crap they produce for TV. So they will never reach anywhere near the level of coolness of the current youtube.
Once they are able to purge all the cool material from youtube and other video sites then the new video sites will become something like your DVR. A place to go watch TV without concern for the program schedule. It will not be cool, but there wont be anything else left to watch.
I don't know about the whole "buying cool" thing, but corporate investment in popular internet crap makes it more available to everyone in the end. The only difference I ever see is that I need to update my Adblock definitions. Not a bad tradeoff. And once the corporation runs the site into the ground I get to bitch and moan and find some other unexploited net niche. It takes all kinds.
With the Youtube clone these companies are trying to build, it's not an issue of coolness, it's an issue of content. I'd say that 95% of Youtube users don't come to Youtube because it's so cool, but simply because they can get the content they want there -- music videos, clips or episodes from TV programmes, and so on.
Even if this new website turns out to be the most dull, boring, embarrassing, wannabe piece of marketing crap ever devised: If you can watch enough free clips from the Daily Show on there without too much hassle, people *will* use it.
Basilisk Digital
"NBC wants to make another YouTube, they have to compete against the original."
Who said this? You, NBC or the media?
It wasn't NBC.
All NBC wants to do is create their own on-line distribution channel; they don't want to "compete" with YouTube. They couldn't give 2 shits about user generated content.
Is the iTunes video store a YouTube "competitor"?
"They are trying to kill a very poplar and nice Goliath."
They could care less whether You-Tube survives or not. All they care about is profiting from their content.
"They aren't starting something new in a new market."
Approved on-line distribution of mass-market video content is still relatively new.
It's possible, but very rare. Whenever a company is acquired, the acquirer's marketing department sets the tone from that point onward. If they're smart, they understand that they bought a certain level of brand equity, which is nothing more than the power of the acquired company's brands in the minds that make up the marketplace. They might also understand that this mysterious quantity is very hard to regain once it has been depleted. Assuming of course, that they care.
Take the acquisition of Rolling Rock Beer by Anheuser-Busch as an example. RR had a brand that capitalized on its niche quality: We're smaller, but better, and we cater to the more discriminating lager drinker. (Whether or not that's true is debatable, I know, but that's the idea.) Add a little mystery like the "33" on the bottle, and some word of mouth (the branding equivalent of gold bullion), and you have a successful product over time. Rolling Rock is then perceived as "cool".
So, A-B buys Rolling Rock. What do they do? They immediately try to sell it like Bud. Quirky but uninspired ads, flashy web site, increasing the scale of operations, closing the original brewery (now that hurts!), and so on. They figure hey, beer is beer, and we know how to sell it, right?
Wrong.
Most Rolling Rock drinkers by the stuff because IT ISN'T BUD, for starters. And the brand equity -- what marketing types christen that "cool" factor -- is being slowly but surely eroded.
So it's not clear how Anheuser will enhance the brand, to try to regain lost ground. Or maybe they're just out to eliminate a competitor, and shaft the consumer in the process by wiping out one more choice. But maintaining (let alone growing) brand equity is a marketing black art, and one that most larger companies stumble over once they acquire another operation.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
They already are, and they are killing it in the process.l /
Haven't anyone seen "Merchants of Cool" ??
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/coo
NBC already has their own content available on nbc.com for viewing, and they continue to take their content, such as SNL skits, down from YouTube. I think that is foolish, considering the only people who go to NBC.com are probably already viewers of NBC, so such clips do not expand their audience. But I guess that is their choice.
But how could a new NBC-Tube possibly work? Why would anyone choose to post their content there instead of YouTube? NBC doesn't want to work with YouTube, why would the community want to work with NBC and add content to their walled garden?
The only thing NBC-Tube could offer over YouTube is NBC/NewsCorp clips that aren't permitted on YouTube. But they don't need the users help to populate NBC-Tube with those, as they already own the content. I'm not surre what the point would be in encouraging users to post clips of shows you already own to a "community" video site you run, when you're already showing the full show online in some cases.
NBC-Tube is likely destined to fail as a user video sharing community, as it serves no purpose and has no attraction to users in that space. It may become the replacement for the NBC.com video site, but that is about it. If NBC wants their videos on a "cool" community site, they'll have to work with one of those sites. Starting a new one that you clearly have ownership of won't encourage a community. Buying into or parterning with an existing one without affecting its operations may have a shot of succeeding.
How cool is Hotmail?
Well, they were perceived as cool there for a while (before kids figured out they were getting scammed on that DRM thing on the iPod). Maybe they can't buy cool but they can rent it.
"I think they are also-rans on the youtube user driven content"
Where has it been stated that they are building a system for user-driven content?
Everything I've seen is they are building a system to distribute and share their own content.
The only people who have said "YouTube killer" have been the media.
If replication ever could mean the same, as innovation. How much different things could be...
Me Too - doesn't it already speak for itself?
Servant of karma
When large coorps like google do it... Sweet!
but when large coorps like NBC buys one... Lame!
..can I be cool too?
Why yes. Yes you can.
... in his latest rap: "I'm hot because I fly, you aint cause you not!"
Oh yeah, in my lame attempt to be relevant to the topic:
As long as the rich corporation brings the content in a reliable media format, the people will come.
Your free first taste shouldn't come with a EULA.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Quality is attributed not bought.An advertised product does not become cool automatically ."cool" is what people
think now,and what was cool 10 years ago is not cool today.Cool is synonymous to fashion trend,it not "cool"
for everyone. You can't force something to be cool,it must be special,unique,uncommon and original .
To sum it:Money doesn't buys hearts.Trying to be cool without being cool in the first place by itself is like your grandma singing self-made rap(which she could think is cool).Replace your grandma with corporation and you get the picture.
There are a couple of cool success stories involving guerilla marketing by Nike and Mountain Dew.
This is a favorite topic of Thomas Frank, author of the aptly-named "Conquest of Cool".
Publisher's promotional page here.
I am not affiliated one way or another, I just enjoyed the book, along with some of his others.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Am I the only one who googled "unga bunga linux"? Sounds like a great name for a distro to me ....
....
Built on Ubuntu, but having Kswahili as the interface language. Primary networking is via a bongo ppp (yes it's been done). Packages are called bungas and are managed by "apt-bunga".
Or maybe not
However, whether creative marketing can be bought... is up for grabs. The more marketing teams you pay, the greater chance that one of them will come up with a truly creative idea that will make your product print money. Unfortunately, you also run the risk of diluting tallent, and following safer routes, instead of more creative and more spontaneous routes. Its all about management and your ability to give your marketing personel the freedom to try new things.
Case in point, Apple is no fluke. Every marketting campaign they do is a winner, at least for the last decade. From the "Think Different" campaign, to the "I'm a Mac" commercials, you bet they've bought "cool". When people start surfing YouTube and your website, simply to watch your commercials, as entertainment, you know you've got something special. This is no accident, the fact is that Apple, and their marketting partners, do a damn good job at inspiring their creative minds to be as open as possible. THAT'S how you buy "cool". This costs money, yes, but it takes a lot more than that.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Case in point: Nike tried for years to get into the skateboard shoe industry... an industry which has been dominated by smaller companies since its inception.
At first, they failed miserably. But with each attempt, they learned a little bit more about how the subculture worked.
Now they probably sell more "skateboarding shoes" than any other company.
Of course, all they've done is buy the mind-share of young people through some adept marketing... but is there any difference between that and "buying cool?"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool /
Makes you think of the topic in a whole different light.
That wasn't me.
Hustlers exist solely through charity. I see their scams, lies, and deceit: I'm too charitable to outright shoot them.
Apple did not "buy cool." Since Steve Jobs returned to the company, they have effectively been "cool." Jobs just understands how to effectively market a product to the mainstream "cool" public, something Microsoft has really never been able to do. The two biggest examples would be the in the MP3 player and search engine markets. The iPod is, more or less, the stereotypical "cool" new piece (or relatively new) piece of technology that all the kids want for Christmas. Microsoft has poured loads and loads of money into developing an equally "cool" competitor, and, largely, has failed. Google, while now a huge corporation in terms of market cap (yet still no-so-huge in terms of revenue), certainly didn't buy its way into pop culture lingo (and the dictionary), but really would be considered "cool." Again, Microsoft has poured loads and loads of money into MSN search and now Live.com but still lags behind Google and Yahoo in terms of search-engine market share. While certainly a marketing monstrosity, Microsoft is in no way "cool" despite trying to "buy cool" for the longest time. Even Windows Vista could be used as an example, with Microsoft spiffing up (and slowing down) their flagship operating system to try to make in more "cool."
Homer: So I realized that being with my family is more important than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: "It's hip to be square."
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it's... cool?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool--not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?
who really cares if their new video site is "cool" or not? if it's got free online streaming of their tv shows and other media that works well (better than current streaming systems from abc etc), as they have promised to provide, then what does it really matter? if they can provide that media legally and accessably, something youtube cannot do, then they will be successful.
Much to Disney and other large media companies that are trying to 'direct' popular culture chagrin it seems that as kids mature and become more cycnical that it is not possible to keep them on the paths of consumption or viewership that they would prefer.
Disney has a lock on the under 10 crowd thanks to 'Little Mermaid on Ice' and direct to video releases of ToyStory 3, etc which the parents all lap up, and which are cross-marketed with Burger King, McDonald's etc. but it seems like that market becomes totally lost to them when the kids become 'tweeners'. They're more likely to go from Winnie the Pooh to Adult Swim or anime than to 'that's so raven' or Kim Possible.
At that point it's all about rejecting the safe fuzzy confines of childhood and trying out things that will scare the tweener's parents and in defining oneself in relation to one's peers. Corporate mass marketing mostly fails to identify or embrace these things and the kids then slip through their fingers. This has helped over the years to spawn the skatepunk Van's culture as well as indie rock and the facebook/youtube/myspace movements.
Youth culture is often wrapped in rebellion, and although it may be co-opted a million times there will always be a recognition of this and a re-rebellion.
OF course the kids may come back to the magic kingdom for gay days when they reach adulthood, or take Magic Kingdom cruises or live in DisneyWorld's gated communities much later, but at this time Nickleodeon too smacks of corporate pandering (Duh, Viacom) and is surely also rejected by the 'cool' kids.
-I'm just sayin...
The difference between the 'cool' companies that lead the way and the 'uncool' large company followers is a question of intent. The youtubes of the world (although certainly not without profit motive) are seeking to solve an existing problem or improve upon an existing method.
Frequently, these companies also have a counter-culture aspect in that they provide a way to do something (distribute video) that the existing infrastructure frowns upon. These 'disruptive' uses appear to place the user above profit as the central concern. Everything from tivo to napster to youtube has been about allowing users to do something that their existing provider initially resisted.
When the old guard caves and decides to follow, their implementation is driven not from a user perspective but with the motivation of defending or protecting their old model. Invariably, this leads to a clumsier implementation, fewer features, and a perception that if the userper is eventually defeated (ms-netscape anyone?) that the service will return to abusing its user base when there is no longer an external motive to play nice.
If NBC really wanted to provide users a better way of accessing its content then their initiative would probably succeed. But the question then becomes what new value are you providing beyond youtube and why build a whole new service instead of cooperating with the upstart provider?
The answer is almost always a less than altruisitic motive. And that turns people off.
Actually if NBC started up a site that posted their NBC content that was easy for people to use and link to and such, they'd probably do quite well.
The problem that most corporations get into when trying to delve into something cool, is their first instinct is to cripple the technology. Look at how cool Sony once was when they were doing just consumer electronics. They had the walkman, and the CD and such. After they bought up Columbia and tried to obtain "synergy" between content creation and consumer electronics, they started sucking big time.
NBC will likely ignore all advice, and create something you can't link into, can't say "Hey go look at this!" to your friends, without signing up for a free userid so they can track everything you do bullshit. And they'll fail.
Youtube as far as technology goes sucks, much like myspace. But as far as usability goes, it's pretty cool. The fact that you can link to the videos through your website so easily is what made it a hit.
And no corporate lawyer or marketing group is going to understand that.
I like to think that a large amount of fanboyish comments on sites like slashdot are just viral marketers who have not yet been exposed.
...to most of the sheep in America. Its worked for Nike, Gap (who use asian slave labor) and some other companies.
Sitting around worrying whether you're cool or not.
By corollary, sitting around wondering whether someone else is cool or not is also not cool.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Actually, I hate to break it to ya, but by-and-large MySpace IS "cool" FWIW. The site definately has grown from a posterboard of bored 18-25 year olds and is being seriously thrust further into the mainstream.
In my humble opinion, it is becoming as ubiquitous as e-mail. A lot of this is fueled by their being owned by NewsCorp. Mass media companies in many ways define cool, and as-such are the driving forces that shape and expand coolness.
I hear every local radio station touting their myspace accounts, I meet local musicians who have myspace sites proudly displayed on their own media and advertisements, and this doesn't seem to be declining.
Once bitten, twice shy.
It seems to me there are two kinds of "cool." The first arises from genuine interest and shared excitement. I think back to the first time I played with a 512k Mac. I'd never seen a computer like that. It was so new, so different, and so exciting to me that I couldn't help but think it was cool. The first time I ever rode a mountain bike on single-track, I understood why so many people were getting into riding them. Again, cool.
The second kind of cool is generated by vast marketing machines. Sometimes it coincides with genuine cool, but most of the time it does not. No matter how hard the Adolph Coors company tries to convince me that drinking their beer will make me cool and get me bikini-clad chicks (in the snow, no less), I'm not going to buy their swill.
That massive media conglomerates want to grab pre-existing Type 1 Cool when they can't generate it using Type 2 methods is understandable. But ultimately cool has a short shelf life. Most big companies don't know how to create Type 1 Cool on their own, so they resort to Type 2 methods in order to keep the cool they've purchased alive. In such situations, the inevitable result is a stinking heap of uncoolness.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Unga Bunga Linux "Wascally Wombat" beta is out...
Maybe not cool, but perhaps Comcastic.
seriously now. most of you are bored IT people that need to kill time
It would explain American Spirit cigarettes, at least. You know, smoke 'em all & let God sort you out. Talk about a deal with the Devil...
Give me a couple thousand, hell just a few hundred dollars, and I'll consider you cool. No need for all the advertising crap...you can spend $5,000,000 on a single commercial, or just give 50,000 random people $10,000 dollars, or just give me and my 4 best friends 1,000,000. Hell, give me $5, a good meal and a bus ride home and your "cool" in my book. Hell, just the good meal at this point.
But seriously, being "cool" is all about giving people something new, but not so new that it is unfamiliar. You have to let people assume they discovered you, and that you weren't pushed onto them. People always think they are cool, and therefore your product is cool, if you just "discovered" it. At the same time, you have to ensure that the actual product is worthwhile.
I'd say "and not a ripp-off", but then again "Blizzard" is considered "cool".
As for "throwing money at the situation", yeah you can totally do it. Just do like Blizzard and ensure you buy employees who enjoy the latest trends. If your an anime company, don't just plaster banner ads on popular anime-based webcomics like megatokyo. Honestly, I have never seen an anime advertised there be "popular". Instead use the trend of torrents to submit "fan-videos" (although professionally done) to sites like Tokyo Toshokan and AMV.org. Throw in TONS of Otaku lingo, and ensure that you try to be as Japanese as possible.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Really? You think that's the meaning of A Hard Day's Night? Methinks you're reading way too much into the lyrics:
I would be, but I'm quoting the movie, not the song. See for yourself.
I can and will say the same thing about paid bloggers. If you can't recognize it, you can't buy it. If it is not cool, you can't push it that way. The effort is doomed before it starts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
is the source of all anonymous Slashdot posts.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
This seems like it. I thought we grew up and decided that how we act, look and pretend to care is irrelevant and we focus on what we actually do for others.
But I digress...
Microsoft has been trying to buy cool for a long time. Look at the XBox and how [un]cool that is!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
If they screw up, I am fine with it, if they produce something better than youtube, I am fine as well. As long as government applies (relatively fair) anti-trust laws, capitalism is more or less ok.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Learn to punctuate. Your title essentially means 'Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool-with-a-question-mark"?'
You meant to put, 'Can Large Corporation Buy "Cool"?'
OSTG owns Slashdot. Does that mean Slashdot's not cool now? Damn!
The whole thing about cool is that it is transient. Once cool is recognised by the majority as being cool and then popularized... it is no longer cool. A corporate buying cool is the same thing... the mainstream has recognised it and thus it must now be uncool. Buying cool is not an good investment.... buying the ability to STAY cool is. (I'm sure you'll all find exceptions... but you'll find this "theory" generally true)
First off, I dispute the notion that NBC has to buy cool. If you've ever spent a night at home flipping through the channels, you'll surely find that NBC has most of the good shows on TV. These guys brought us Heros, Studio 60, Scrubs, My Name is Earl, The Office and Saturday Night Live, where every other channel is stuck on cop dramas and CSI; I figure these guys know a thing or two about what people want. YouTube is a shitty implementation of a very good idea. The search feature is perpectually broken, if you want to watch a big video broken up in to multible parts, YouTube never shows you the parts in order, or sometimes it's missing one of the parts of the movie... you can't stay full screen for longer than it takes to watch a video, it doesn't figure out which videos you might want to watch so you can vege out to some youtube... I know YouTube is an internet success story, and we all love it because it's online, but seriously - there's flaws. If I were NBC, I'd want to give the users a way to watch their media, online, in a way that they could profit from it. We all want in-demand shows and content, they might just deliever on that. Watch all your favorite shows, anytime, with just enough commertials to turn a profit.
Just about that :
assertion that Slashdot is full of Very Powerful People whose opinions will make or break the NBC site.
slashdot is actually full of people whose opinions made linux, and php, and the like, DESPITE fight-back from hulking dinosaurs like microsoft and the like.
it is not too far fetched to assume that with the resources these people have, they would be able to put out new things to rival anything nbc can put out.
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AOL was popular.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac