Thursday, January 01, 2004

Power to the people, but not to the iPod

With the dumbing down of the media the Internet has been a great boom for freedom of speech, now anyone with access to a computer can put up a website and say what they want. The flip side is such messages get drowned out in the noise of countless millions of other websites. However in recent times large networks of interconnected blogs and independent user forums have come to rescue. They have an interesting and unexpected ability to filter out a lot of the noise and amplify even the quietest important message to the level of popular consciousness. So quite often it is now what the popular mass of people think is important that gets propogated, instead of what story some single corporate controlled editor decides to send us.

This effect is how the Neistat Brothers Message From the Neistat Brothers about iPods premature battery problem got widespread publicity and eventually, perhaps, had some effect in causing Apple to instigate a $99 battery replacement policy and extended battery warranty.

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