Ben Metcalfe

iDon’t.com Part I: an poor response to an important issue

Ben

For those who have missed it, SanDisk have launched “iDon’t.com“, a propaganda site with the following call-to-action:

Calling all free thinkers, contrarian’s and malcontents. The time has come to rise up against the iTatorship To resist the monotony of white earbuds and reject the oppressive forces of culture conformity.

(BTW: someone should tell SanDisk that using apostrophes in urls that are not actually valid is a very bad idea)

    

iDon’t.com’s aim is clearly to persuade people to consider buying MP3 players other than Applei iPods. However the site falls short of any ‘fact’-orientated reasons why non-iPod units should be considered. Instead SanDisk duck-out by linking to third party sites to do “the dirty work”.

Aside from parody sites the best SanDisk can come up with is iPodsDirtySecret.com, which highlights the problem with iPod batteries often only lasting 18 months and being hard/expensive to replace. I’m not a big fan of iPods, but even I have to admit that I believe this issue has been resolved in more recent iPod generations.

Other than that, the site seems to be light of any facts, and somewhat perversely relies on the same kind of “pseudo-slick marketing” that they themselves have a problem with Apple using.

This is post could also be titled “How not to run a ‘skunkworks’/’blackops’ site”.

  1. Don’t get your corporate marketing department to build the site. This site reeks of it!
  2. Harness the power of the blogosphere. This site has done nothing to get itself part of the blogosphere. It’s got a blog but it’s hidden and under-used
  3. Don’t use Flash. How can bloggers (or anyone else) link to key parts of your site? Also, if you want to be “dahn wit’ da kidz” AJAX is the way to go. This site could certainly have been built with AJAX if they had found the right design team
  4. Get your facts right Have facts. Get some balls and take on the real issues like DRM. These types of sites are aimed at a highly discerning and cynical crowd. Don’t treat them like idiots.
  5. If you’re not going to “implicate” your company by mentioning it at all on the site, at least register the domain such that the whois doesn’t say it’s registered to your company!

People who read my blog will know that I hate iPods, both for the fact they’ve become an exclusivity-item (it’s just a bloody music player!) and more importantly the long-term issues of the public’s lack of awareness around the DRM lock-in that the iPod has created.

The latter issue seems such a missed opportunity it makes me want to weep. In Part II I’m going to outline the real issues a secondary MP3 player like SanDisk should be focusing on.