Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Have the tech “early adopters” lost their touch?

First, Hugh MacLeod calls Quechup “fucking scumbags” for purportedly confusing him about “contact management” and now, once geeks gone wild for the iPhone are going wild because their hero, Steve Jobs, is deemed to have “screwed” them into waiting hours on line AND paying full price to be the first to delcare iPhone nirvana!

CHILL OUT DUDES!

Quechup is NOT the problem, YOUR mass import of YOUR unwitting email address book is. Who says all of your email contacts want their personal, confidential email addresses filtered by every single Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter wannabe: You do.

Steve Jobs is NOT the problem, YOUR fickle love hate worship for all YOUR things Apple is. Who says you have to camp out overnight at the Palo Alto Apple to “cross path with Jobs”: You do.

You want in to “early adopter” glory? You have to pay the price.

The price for Quechup glory is surprising low, and so is the Apple iPhone glory price.

Don’t want to blame Quechup for “spamming” the email list that you gave them? READ THE QUECHUP INSTRUCTIONS!

Don’t want Apple to undercut you two months out of the iPhone gate? WAIT FOR THE INEVITABLE PRICE DROP.

But why wait? Why deprive yourself of all things Apple for even one day?

After all, what price did you really pay to be able to live the Apple dream from day one? JUST $3 A DAY!

So, don’t be iPhone cheapstkate cry babies! Be the cool dudes that you really are: Declare your Steve Job worship is a bargain at the $200 you invested to be the proud, first one on your virtual blocks, owners of iPhone, at a cool $599.

Not convinced? Just relive the testimonial of Thomas Hawk:

To those who say it was stupid to camp out overnight at the Palo Alto Apple store when I could have gotten it waiting only 4 hours in line at a At&T store somewhere else, you just don’t get it.

Camping out last night at the Palo Alto Apple store was not about an iPhone. It was about an experience. Something that I value far more than my new iPhone. There were many highlights for me.

When we left the Apple store we crossed paths with Jobs. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even notice. Kristopher did though and he traded nods and a wink with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has been a long-time hero of Kristopher’s. It was an intensely powerful emotional thing for him. One of the best days of his life I’m sure.

If THAT is not worth $200, what is!

PLUS: Hey iPhone ‘Early Adopters’: NO Google Fight in the Real Apple World and BOYCOTT: Sweet Apple Revenge! Got Screwed? Return the iPod Favor

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Two days ago, the world experienced GEEKS GONE WILD for Facebook on the iPhone.

Apple consumers are also overheated about the iPhone; Ultra cool apparently entails ultra battery replacements.

One constituency is staying calm, “cool” and collected amidst the iPhone frenzy, however: Multiply.com, a Facebook competitor, on the Internet, and now on the iPhone as well. The Multiply tag line is “share your life with your friends.” As of today, the sharing can take place directly from the iPhone.

What’s more, more sharing can be done via Multiply on the iPhone, than via Facebook on the iPhone, according to Multiply Founder and CEO Peter Pezaris.

I spoke with Pezaris on the eve of the Multiply iPhone launch; He proudly notes 13 different ways social networking with Mulitply on the iPhone beats social networking with Facebook on the iPhone. SEE BELOW

Pezaris claims Multiply on the iPhone is “the most feature-rich, mobile media sharing solution available.”

On the iPhone, or on the Web, Multiply beats Facebook, Pezaris proudly told me. How so? While Facebook and MySpace are popular “hangouts” where young people congregate to hook up, Multiply is a serious media sharing platform for serious adults, according to Pezaris:

We have worked to create applications and features that our family, friends and colleagues would want because Multiply is about communicating and sharing with people we most care about, not profile-surfing or adding-in strangers as friends.

Multiply is Pezaris’ second time at Web entrepreneurship bat. In his first go around, Pezaris hit a home run, parlaying $10,000 of personal funds into a eight figure buy out. Pezaris co-founded Commissioner.com, a fantasy sports statistics service which was later merged into SportsLine.com.

Multiply is VC backed, Pezaris expects to soon close a Series B round. He will undoubtedly share the news with “family, friends and colleagues,” at Multiply.

ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg Maps U.S.Patent for Facebook SOCIAL NETWORK Engine and TechStars Top Ten: Search to Phone Leads Startup Pack

PLUS: Does USC Annenberg OJR Want Old Media Journalists to Shut Up?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Stunning! Beautiful! Great Job! GEEKS GONE WILD for Facebook on the the iPhone! BUT, Facebook is NOT open, on the iPhone.

Ultra iPhone Cool OR Ultra Facebook Hype?

“To be or not to be,” that used to be the question. Now, Facebook: “Open, or not open” is the question, but it is a silly one.

Facebook is CLOSED and always will be, unless Mark Zuckerberg turns his back on all that he touts Facebook supposedly stands for: A special walled off place for “trusted” connections within the greater wild, wild Web.

The iphone.facebook.com welcome presents the typical virtual brick wall Facebook offers the world: A blank screen!

When Facebook was first erroneously declared F8 “open” in May, I underscored MySpace is 179 million times more open than Facebook. Since, Tom Anderson has gotten even friendlier at MySpace, but Zuckerberg still plays hard to get at Facebook.

Tom now has 196, 403, 410 friends. What about Zuckerberg? Who knows.

I can see all of Tom’s friends via his open profile at the number one (by far) social network. How about Mark?Can I get to know him at Facebook? NO. Can I see his “face,” can I be introduced to his friends at Facebook? NO. How many Facebook friends does Zuckerberg have? Not the 200 million Anderson boasts!

Via a Google search for “Tom Anderson MySpace profile,” I “hooked-up” with the very open, social Tom at MySpace, immediately. Via a Google search for “Mark Zuckerberg Facebook profile,” Zuckerberg, himself, was MIA.

The Facebook faithful will counter that a “closed, open” Facebook is a good thing, echoing the Facebook company line that Facebook IS all about “trusted connections,” as opposed to the anything goes wild wild MySpace.

The reality of the Facebook phenomenon, though, is that it is nothing that it promises, or seems to be. Facebook is NOT an open Web site, but it is not a protected social safe haven, either.

After all, can a “valid” Hotmail address really guarantee “trusted connections” at Facebook? A Harvard.edu is not even a guarantee for Facebook trusted privacy: Just ask Caroline Giuliani!

Flaunting Facebook’s own Terms of Service, her Facebook profile was hijacked in the name of media sensationalism; Lucy Morrow Caldwell, Harvard student cum Slate reporter, took a screenshot of Giuliani’s private profile and posted it to the open Web for the world to see.

Facebook code was not manipulated, something worse was: The integrity of the Facebook social graph.

Facebook code? THAT was manipulated a few days later! SEE Zuckerberg Insecurity Exposed: A Facebook Bug Attacks Again

AND: Facebook Embroiled in Washington DC Scandal: Howard Kurtz Dishes the Dirt

PLUS: NYC Street Tip: Blogging Can Be Hazardous to Your Sex Life

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Is Walt Mossberg prepping for “Personal Technology” brought to you by Rupert Murdoch’s News corp.?

The Wall Street Journal mainstream media tech gadget maven “of record” relaxes staid headline tradition to engage in typical blogosphere “scoop” hyperbole at his own Mossblog in a post titled: “Secret new iPhone features.”

REALLY? What does ”secret” mean in Walt’s view of the iPhone world? Functional enhancements publicly available but apparently not consacrated by virtue of an official Apple press release or user manual update:

Apple issued its first iPhone update this week. And, while the company billed it as merely a bug-fix and security-improvement patch, in fact it has several small feature improvements that Apple hasn’t announced or documented. These aren’t the big items, like an instant-messaging program, which may come later. But they make the phone nicer to use.

Mossberg ”unveils” to the world at his blog the purported “secret” iPhone features that are nevertheless publcly available to not only Walt, but undoubtedly to every retail purchaser of the iPhone:

Here are a few of these hidden new features I discovered after performing the update.

• In the Favorites list in the Phone module, you can now have 50 entries instead of 20.
• In the email module, you can now automatically BCC yourself on every message you send.
• The iPhone can now play music through many previously incompatible car adapters and other external speakers originally designed for the iPod.

If the Mossberg heralded “new” iPhone “features” were really “hidden,” he wouldn’t have “discovered” them.

Walt to the iPhone user rescue nevertheless? iLounge is not convinced:

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg claims in his blog that, following the 1.0.1 update, the “iPhone can now play music through many previously incompatible car adapters and other external speakers originally designed for the iPod.” Though iLounge’s editors have had no success getting iPhone to work properly with their favorite car adapters, we would be interested in hearing new reader experiences based on version 1.0.1.

Mossberg is reaching out to his readers as well to share their iPhone (not so) “secrets”:

I’m sure readers have found some other secret features in this first iPhone update. Let me know what they are.

But wouldn’t the “secret” be out then?

ALSO: Norman Pearlstine ‘Excited’ by a Rupert Murdoch Led Dow Jones and Blogging Ethics: Why Blog ‘Disclosure’ is NO Panacea

PLUS: Facebook Polling: The Social Graph is 64% White and Silicon Valley ‘Sucks’? Welcome to Silicon Alley!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Michael Arrington gives Dave Winer a big ‘ol pat on the TwitterGram back while wondering what the “media hacker” will “blend up next.”

No need to wonder about what Winer was blending yesterday, thanks to the mighty Twitter itself: “Fresh cherries”!

Yes, thanks to the narcissism enabling and voyeurism inducing Twitter, the world was put on notice on July 6, 2007, at 12:16 am, by Dave Winer, that the same Dave Winer was “eating cherries” at that precise moment AND the verdict, to boot: “Very much not disgusting.”

Winer, not one to leave his Twitter “friends and followers” in a cherry eating dark, graciously Twittered in but a moment later to advise and assure: “Current temp in Berkely, 55 degrees F. Great sleeping weather, in just a few minutes after I polish off these cherries.”

Before Winer ravished his prize cherries, though, he publicly checked in with Scobleizer with important notices: “check your email for a photo of the brat who hasled everyone at the Palo Alto Store on opening day for the iPhone.”

Apparently, not all of the youthful exuberance displayed at the once-in-a-lifetime Apple Experiential Retail cum Steve Jobs love fest was as generationally inspiring as the Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk clans effused.

SEE Apple Retail: Who Needs Woodstock, iGot iPhone!

“I hear you’d like to phone in TwitterGrams,” Winer announces in announcing he is helping Twitter blabber flourish, with a TwitterGram over the phone tool.

Brian Eisenberg comments at TechCrunch: “Watching Scoble and Winer twittergram each other is pretty damn interesting.”

HOW SO? What IS interesting is the AT&T box Winer Twittered himself into with his cherry orgy in Berkely!

Dave Winer’s Twitter, sponsored by AT&T (thanks to Ads by Google)!!!

Yes, the one and only AT&T that Winer just last month called “heinous” while calling for a special “death penalty” just for AT&T corporation.

While Winer may declare death to AT&T at his blog, he is keeping AT&T alive by Twittering.

ALSO: Facebook, Twitter Rule? Get a REAL (social networking) Life! and Google Buys Postini PLUS 500 million Email Secrets

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Disclaimer: “Take Over” is a ludicrous claim, in the words of Jeremy Toeman, AND hyperbole is ludicrous as well!

Nevertheless, a blueprint for “how Apple will use the iPhone to take over the wireless industry,” is offered by Scott Karp, in six convenient paragraphs.

Toeman sees things differently, underscoring the need for ”domain expertise and the difference between the Web world and the device world.”

To put things in perspective, “Do you have any idea the sheer volume of mobile handsets sold worldwide?” Toeman asks:

There are a lot fewer people influenced by style and experience in the phone industry than in others.  The Razr (aka the most successful cell phone of all time) moved 50M units in 4 years.  And that’s been THE trendy phone to-date, and you can get them for next-to-nothing already.

The turnover rate in mobile phones in the US is under two years and dropping.  In countries like Hong Kong it’s hovering just over 3 months.  So Apple has to not only have the “best” phone (already questionable), but they must sustain that position continuously.

Don’t forget that the mobile OS industry is much less locked-down than the PC industry, where the only competition takes 5 years to put out a terrible upgrade to their OS.  There are 4 other solid mobile operating systems for manufacturers to choose from, all of which allow for tremendous device flexibility.

Unlike the PC industry which operates on margins so bad that a single tech support call makes a PC unprofitable, there’s plenty of money in mobile.  LG, Samsung, Moto, and Nokia (to name a few) will not bend-over quite as peacefully as Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and Sony (you know Sony, right, makers of my hunk-o-laptop?) have to the competition.

BUT, Toeman merely debunks a wireless industry take over by Apple scenario. Karp actually under promised in his headline and over delivered in his post: He signs off by pronouncing Apple to be the preordained ruler of the entire computing and entertainment universe, Microsoft and Google be damned!

What Apple really wants is to sell unlocked iPhones that can be used on any network — and I believe they will pull it off. Thus, Apple will do to the wireless carriers and other cell phone makers what they did to the music industry and makers of digital music players — they will completely take over.

From there, Apple will turn its attention to the last great battle — PCs. Once you own both an iPod and an iPhone, you’re going to look at your Windows PC and ask yourself — what am I thinking?

While Karp does not specifically reference Google in his wistful Apple rules the world scenario, any Microsoft killer strategy requires “taking over” Google as well, the ruler of the Web, Google’s anti-Microsoft platform.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO AND Apple Director, NOT at Apple’s service for THAT scenario!

ALSO: Facebook iPhone Verdict: NOT Buying It

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN