Archive for September 9th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple, on Tuesday at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event. (Credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)
By Kyle Austin
The unflappable Steve Jobs hit the stage this afternoon at Apple’s secrative ”Let’s Rock” event. So secrative in-fact, that a senior BusinessWeek writer was asking me if I knew anything about what they may announce today, last night. With questions lingering about his health, he took no time to address what was on every-one’s mind. In fact, he opened with a slide (a la Mark Twain) that simply said “Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated.”
Jobs was obviously having fun with the speculation that spun out of his gaunt public appearance earlier this year, re-surfaced in Joe Nocera’s infamous article and culminated with Bloomberg mistakenly publishing his obituary during a common internal update two weeks ago.
With what appears to be minor announcements surfacing during his current presentation; many believe his PR appearance at the event was choreographed to illustrate his wellness to investors and industry watchers.
September 9th, 2008
By Ben Haber
By Ben Haber
As of this morning, you can now purchase your plane tickets on eBay.
With airline prices already reaching crazy levels, Jet Blue has decided to put some round-trip tickets up for auction. The auctions are set to last either three, five, or seven days, and offer flights from over twenty cities.
Jet Blue is even offering a ‘mystery vacation’ packages that leave from New York (JFK) and go to one of their mystery locations. Some of the mystery packages are in the U.S., while others are deemed international trips.
Jet Blue’s spokesperson, Alison Eshelman, commented on this new initiative: “Fall is typically a slower travel period for customers. As summer comes to an end, they rein in travel plans. By auctioning flights, we’re giving customers a flexible and affordable way to get weekend deals.”
The auctions opened up at five or ten cents, but have quickly climbed to more normal prices. The current bid one round-trip flight from Boston to Washington, D.C. is just $81, while normal cost for the exact same flights is 144.50. The mystery vacations have jumped to higher prices (hotel is included) that range from $1,325 to $3,350.
Is this marketing tactic a good move by Jet Blue? It should definitely attract more prospective travelers to their site and add some additional customers to their traditionally slow travel period. The mystery vacation package is also a good idea, as it provides someone with an item to bid on that doesn’t have a definite value.
However, my big question is whether bidders will be able to snag a good deal. All of the auctions conclude by Sunday, so we’ll know soon!
September 9th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
Ah, start-up week. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’re aware that this is start-up week for Silicon Valley. With 70 start-ups launching at the annual DEMO conference and 50 launching at the second annual TechCrunch50 conference (TC50), VC’s and technology reporters are jet-setting back and forth between San Francisco and San Diego.
Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, and Jason Calacanis, a former executive at AOL, are directly competing with DEMO this year and challenging the $18,500 that DEMO charges each start-up presenting at their conference (Owned by technology publisher IDG). Arrington and Calacanis have screened more then 1,000 start-ups and are debuting the 50 best through Wednesday for no fee (They get their money through sponsors like Google and Charles River Ventures). With folks like Marissa Meyer of Google and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace joining the 50 start-ups in making announcements at TC50, it seems as though Arrington has created a bigger media event (Besides the fact that the Wi-Fi didn’t work and no one could file stories live there).
Scobleizer
Arrington certainly has more celebrities then DEMO; just with Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in attendance. As Brad Stone of the New York Times reports, Kutcher is taking his shot at Mark Zuckerberg and Perez Hilton in launching his own start-up, or he’s just Punking us.
Kutcher used the conference to launch Blah Girls, a do-good celebrity gossip site with an interactive twist. Those that read the gossip site can interact with the three “Blah Girls” by sending comments that they will respond to using an automatic chat bot. The site also seems to be using an ad strategy somewhat similar to what MySpace integrated recently with the “Dark Knight” ad wrap, in teaming with Vitamin Water. In his interview with Stone, Kutcher certainly speaks like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and even acknowledges the “3 Screen Strategy” that has been made popular by folks like Scott Helbing of AT&T.
“The Web is a great place to create brands that can travel to multiple platforms. By traveling to multiple platforms you can create multiple revenue streams. That is one component…. I think this [the computer] is the DVR of the future. If we can establish ourselves at the ground level of the wild wild West of content creation, we can be on top of potentially a very large business. I like that.” ~ Ashton Kutcher with Brad Stone of the New York Times
Tell us what you think about Blah Girls. Is Kutcher on to something or is he getting Punk’d?
September 9th, 2008
