21st
I’m sorry but this is just freakin’ smart. How they’ll navigate the compensatory issues is obviously the thorniest obstacle — but seiously, this is a fantastic idea — TC (and others) are in a unique place of knowing what the market has and what the market needs (even craves). Now they can productize that expertise, in the form of an ongoing collaboration with their readers/audience. Even if it fails spectacularly, it will have served the purpose of empowering TC readers and more fully investing them in the community of which they are an ever-more important part. Imagine if a venture funded startup tried to do this same thing (or an established BigCo for that matter). It’s pretty unlikely. And no doubt the fact that Arrington was more or less begging for products like Loopt, Whrrl and Moximity way back in September of 2007 added fuel to this fire.
And — this is yet another example of a trend we’re seeing quickly reach its tipping point, and for good reason — “offline” articulations/actions/shenanigans perpetrated by online communities of practice — that is, finally and truly putting our collective minds to work against a background of shared objectives (at least in principle). There are so many examples of companies and projects coming at this idea from different angles that it deserves another post, but this is again, a great idea, and certainly another example of how the lines between product development, marketing, journalism and sales (and more) are being drawn anew (conflict of interest hawks notwithstanding).
What does it all mean? Well, who the heck knows. But it is quite interesting (or condemming, depending on how you look at it) that in a sea of instructional video sites and widgemakers, fundamentally viable ideas like a web tablet/cloudbook may not see the light of day until…a blogger and his readers start working on it? I think that all of us will be watching this one closely, not to mention a few others who might like to see TC eat its own words.
Can it really be that hard? I think we’re about to find out…and the announcement is a hell of a lot more interesting, too, in the context of today’s NYT piece on why the likes of Dell and HP are worried about exactly this kind of device.
