OpenMoko - We Need HYPE, and we need it yesterday!

Danijel Orsolic libervis at libervis.com
Mon Jun 4 23:28:50 CEST 2007


I'll chip in here for once. :)

I agree with what some have said that we should better wait before the phone is actually a finished product we can point to (including a web site or store where people can easily buy it).

However in the meantime I think we should think about the marketing subject, build up the marketing machine, so to speak, which we will use once the phone is out. It's basically just preparation.

I've recently started a web site (http://www.mobiliberty.com) which was to focus on phones like Neo1973, open in nature, powered by Free Software and Free Standards, but guess what, it hasn't been such a big success and there just aren't enough stories around for the site to really have much meat to chew on. Right now I'm basically working away on my other projects and leaving that site for some sort of a revision until a day comes when the world of open mobiles will really be interesting enough for one news/blog site to prosper out of it (and a day when I will own one to talk about first hand too ;) ). In other words, I'm waiting for Neo1973 to come out and make a mark.

And I would be willing to help that happen. Someone mentioned an OpenMoko site in Hungary. I think that's a very good idea. We should have as many countries covered as possible. I'm from Croatia (neighbouring Hungary) and perhaps opening a Croatian OpenMoko site would be a good idea too, though that would depend on the market here I suppose, which might not be as big on FOSS related stuff as Hungary.

Anyway, the overall point is, we can start thinking about it, making plans and preparations, laying out the structure we need to make Neo1973 a worldwide hit once it comes out.

I also hope and expect FIC will invest considerable effort in this regard. They are making and selling these phones after all. It's their brand on it!

Cheers

Danijel




On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:27:38 -0500
"el jefe delito" <eljefedelito at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regardless of where the hardware and software are right now, I would imagine
> that they both will be further along come release date.  But, outside of
> this community and the few people that remember us telling them about the
> FIC Neo1973 and the OpenMoko platform, who knows about this phone or
> platform?
> 
> Slashdot and NYTimes and many other sites have articles about the Apple
> iPhone, but very rarely is the Neo1973 mentioned.  We, the OpenMoko
> community, are interested in these articles too (I would imagine), and yet
> no one ever posts a comment about the Neo1973 (except me, it seems).  If we
> don't get the mainstream press to write about the Neo1973, we (or FIC) are
> going to have a difficult time selling devices and getting out there.  If
> they (press) won't write about the Neo1973, the least we can do is mention
> the Neo1973 in the reader comments, with a link to the wiki.
> 
> Here is one such article from just this weekend.  The iPhone will be getting
> a lot of coverage, and as different as the two philosophies may be, the
> average person on the street will see the two phones as very similar.  If we
> have a great feature comparison, why not let people know??
> http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/fever-builds-for-iphone-anxiety-too/
> 
> I hope that we can start to create some buzz about this product!  Being
> open, being able to work with multiple service providers, being unlocked,
> being cheaper, being higher-resolution... all of these are benefits that we
> must PROMOTE.  The quicker we can post on an article, the higher on the
> Comments list we will be and the more reads that comment will get.  No one
> reads Comment #154267....
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -- 
> start using Free software
>   http://www.linux.org
>   http://www.fsf.org
> It's a matter of Liberty not Price:
>   "Free Software exists to free you from the artificial constraints set by
> Apple and Microsoft.  Free software is Unrestricted software.  Get Free."
> 




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