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i guess the guys that work their keep track of what people do on them though so they can tone their sales approach to the customer in the store.
I think there's a list of fad sites that come and go that the geek market get into. The trick is to detect the sites that add real value and traction.
Still lotttsa great things in TVland, Veronica Mars, 24, Earl, The Closer, Weeds, Monk, The Office, Scrubs, Jericho, Eureka, Battlestar Galactica, LOST, The 4400, Rescue Me, Prison Break, Blade...
I find that interesting; while myspace is known worldwide, some regions use other services exclusively because ALL their friends are ALREADY on it.
Oh, and there are NO apple stores here either. Stores selling macs yes, but not apple stores.
~Michael
You would have a biased and skewed sample that doesn't represent the overall population.... and even if your intent was to see leading edge stuff, you would still be better off watching college kids in the computer labs.
Instead you should check out data from comScore. They follow around millions of people and these data are like a crystal ball. The online behavior is also used to predict offline behavior. If you aren't part of google, comscore is your next best bet, in my opinion.
Be good,
E. David Zotter
I do think you are onto something about the courtesy aspect of Apple Stores, Robert. It is where people drop in to do a swift email check if they don't have a laptop with them or don't want to open it, or to print a quick copy of something online, or just to borrow a free Wi-Fi connection, which often can be done sitting outside the store.
Any trends or patterns you might think you are gleening from the actual usage patterns is likely not indicitive of much of anything. Is what you are seeing at an Apple store the same patterns you would see by looking over the shoulders of users at Starbucks. Or how about San Francisco Giant home baseball games? :-). Or the usage patterns of people at the free internet kiosks at
DisneyQuest? Or on a cruise ship? In short I think your sample size at an Apple store is not diverse enough to draw any sort of conclusions.
And like Chris said, now that you are in the content business, why are you wasting your time hanging out at an Apple store, when you should be looking at the trends and patterns of the entertainment industry.
Oh, and several people there told me they had PCs at home (and there was a guy with a Dell in the theater, probably contemplating an Apple purchase or just sucking down the free WiFi).
And if there is an open network, snoop around if over the shoulder is not your style.
Jean Louis Gassee (former executive at Apple, who went on to start Be) worked the counter at Fry's Electronics to learn more about what people wanted. That was back in the 1980s.
As for Apple logging everything that everone does, now don't go giving them evil ideas :D , remember Google "don't be evil"
Needless to say, as others have tried to illuminate your daftness, you'd do better to go to an actual internet cafe where people's primary objective is to use the computer, not take a 3-minute spin on some hardware for the purposes of forming an opinion about it.
It's statistically rubbish and contextually garbage as an approach. Which is possibly why you're neither a product planner and nor a competentn technology pundit.
Stop beating up on Robert. He's found a useful data point (which product managers need to use several data points to see the big picture)
Multiple Data Points add up to a line --which tells a story and draws a picture
A high foot traffic internet kiosk center in the a well known technology metropolis is a good data point.
Robert is right = good data point, and can be used to help tell the bigger story.
Similarly, people might open websites that are not displayed correctly in every browser to check how this thing works on Apple.
I will do the same. If I go to Apple store, I would open websites that sometimes show problems in firefox e.g websites made in asp.net etc.
My point was more that let's just make sure that a lot of the future is being invented in Silicon Valley, but may not be an indicator of what will be adopted across the nation (i.e. echo chamber)
The 53,651 Meme -- and the Silicon Valley geek echo chamber
http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/05/16/t...
John
Regarding the 53,651 meme? The problem with that whole thing is that it's all wrong. We're in a Digg world now. Every link on Digg drives 20,000 to 60,000 visitors in the first 24 hours alone. Since one link will only get clicked on by maybe 1/10th the readers there, you can do the math.
Anyway, those who "poopoo" the early adopters usually turn out wrong.
Even more important if your product appeals to the college crowd.