Lemmings – Networking events and Twitter mean mass consumerism

Via Walter Higgin’s Twitter is the story of how Gordon Murray from eWrite brought along his Nokia 770 Internet Tablet to Open Coffee Cork. A quick showing around and with a pricetag of €100 ex VAT and Walter decided to buy two, Rory bought one and Diarmuid bought four apparently. Walter’s Twitter evangelising of it then got Conor, myself, Niall and Elly to buy one. So 24 hours later and 11 have been purchased, all as a result of one person at an event yesterday.

Nokia 770

Interesting to see the chain-reaction to something like this. I think were it not for Walter’s evangelising, I probably would not have purchased one. I’ve seen this bargain being discussed on boards.ie for weeks now and was not tempted but the minute it got closer to home, the level of trust went up for me and I was easily persuaded to part with my money. It might also to do with the fact that I saw Walter’s delicious feed and saw him bookmarking all these resources for the device, showing me the abilities of the device as shown by people and not corporate tech specs. Also, I’m sure the fact that Walter for me can be a local point man (in a way) for the Nokia 770 helped. (Yes Walter, you’re my tech support for it.)

I wonder can sites like LouderVoice tap into that? A way of adding other reviewers as friends and having a filter so that reviews from this closer network gives them a higher ranking than any of the uber-reviewers that are out there? And stagger it down so friends of friends come up next etc.

I think if a company can figure out how to make your friend a salesperson then their sales rates would go through the roof. Of course your friend can’t see themselves as a salesperson or get monetary reward as then monetary motivation can skew their recommendations. If a company can provide free evangelising tools for their products, perhaps this is one way of increasing sales. Of course the first step in all of this is to make a great product.

20 Responses to “Lemmings – Networking events and Twitter mean mass consumerism”

  1. Michele says:

    What’s the email client like?

  2. Simon McGarr says:

    That’s a fierce good price.

    My n800, the next step up, cost more than twice that from ebay. One of the Nokia’s big problems is that it’s nigh impossible to find anywhere that has one you can play with. I’d be interested to compare the 770 and the 800.

    On the 800 the email client is clunky but passable. But I haven’t even bothered to use it, as I’m using Gmail instead for sending the odd email.

    Who’s selling them for €100? I might still be interested myself.

  3. Yes.
    To all of it.
    Particularly the LouderVoice bit!

  4. Damien B says:

    I was looking at this on nokia.com, and got turned off the by 499 price tag. But E118.95 with a 1gig card at expansys is a different offer altogether. I’m intrigued 🙂

  5. Pat Phelan says:

    I think you could even go further back the line to Expansy’s own blog
    http://www.expansys.com/blog.aspx?p=15

  6. Would love to hear when y’all get your hands on the units what the browser support for AJAXy stuff is like? If it fully supports gmail, gcal, gdocuments, etc., I could yet pull out the credit card for one.

  7. Paul Sweeney says:

    Just a great example of how a particular circle of users (early adopters) can influence each other. What I love, LOVE, is the browsing of the delicious tags to see the resources that are relevant to that purchase. This is Gold for early adopters and if someone can find a way to manage tag feeds so that they stream in a-la-grazr then you are on to something.

  8. James says:

    Debian based? My god, now I want one.

  9. Rather impressed with this – 2 mins after reading your post Damien I had ordered it off Expansys and with the 1gb card for an extra €4 that’s an astounding bargain.

    Never EVER under-value the power of peer review.

    Really impressed – I’ve just bought a new laptop and was in the process of buying a media remote – looks like I’ve just done that considering it’s bluetooth capabilities. Fab.

    Keep up the good work Damien.

    Any suggest at what I should buy for dinner? 😉

  10. Justin Mason says:

    damn. Expansys.ie are now sold out!

    ‘Availability: Estimated 7 Days’

  11. Paul Browne says:

    Make that 12.

    Just bought one on the back of Damiens recommendation.

    Paul

  12. +1

    Will probably buy a GPS receiver off ebay and play with Maemo Mapper. Now those 10 days will seem like an eternity…

    I hold you personally responsible for such a waste of money 🙂

  13. […] Damien’s comments on this social phenomenon are well worth catching here ”if a company can figure out how to make your friend a salesperson then their sales rates would go through the roof.” […]

  14. mj says:

    I ordered two of the 770s but then decided to just get one n800. Reason being simple instant gratification. I then added 4 GB of storage for £29 from my local Maplin. And I’m now loading films for me and the kids as it reads the same MP4 content I’ve been digitising for my iPod and AppleTV.

    I think I’d like a 770 anyway for review later but the n800 is a lot better than I thought it would be.

  15. MJ, I’d be interested in a full review of the N800 after a few weeks of use please. I’m torn between these two devices now but definitely think I’ll be getting one for on-the-road management of my websites.

  16. […] Now I’m going to add a fourth : the Nokia 770 , bought solely on Damien’s recommendation. It’s not a phone , more of a big screen that you can add your existing phone (it connects pretty automatically via bluetooth, and will use any available wireless network). It solves the problem of using internet on your mobile ; before you had to choose between a normal-ish phone with a tiny internet screen, or a large screen but having to hold a brick to your ear to make calls. It’s almost small – about the size of 2 decks of playing cards. […]

  17. […] Back on July 21st, Damien gave a quick review of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which Expansys were flogging for a reasonable 70 quid. Gordon Murray from eWrite brought along his Nokia 770 Internet Tablet to Open Coffee Cork. A quick showing around and with a pricetag of €100 ex VAT and Walter decided to buy two, Rory bought one and Diarmuid bought four apparently. Walter’s Twitter evangelising of it then got Conor, myself, Niall and Elly to buy one. So 24 hours later and 11 have been purchased, all as a result of one person at an event yesterday. […]

  18. […] people should figure out how to turn the influence experienced in small tech communities on Twitter and other areas into every day life, where people will trust the judgement of others and […]

  19. […] about politics, trying to engage these people directly will more than likely be futile. Like bloggers influenced by their peers to go and buy technology, these people need to be influenced by people in their social groupings […]

  20. […] back for a second to the Nokia N770 buying frenzy that engulfed the Irish microblogging sphere months ago. I’m not suggesting for a second that […]