February 21, 2004

Chicago Tribune Duped

Wow, I duped the Chicago Tribune.

They ran a story in today's paper (21 Feb 2003) about social networks, and it mentions that Amazon is getting into the business, with its new "Pricekut" network.

Only one problem.

I made Pricekut up as a joke, in a story I wrote in Denounce.com:

http://www.denounce.com/archives/000049.html

What's more, the Tribune even gets this guy "Tom Anderson", president of something called Myspace, to comment on Amazon's new Pricekut. Here's a clip from the Tribune story:

Amazon.com will join the fray when it rolls out PriceKut, a social network where customers can meet each other to discuss bargains, but only after first purchasing something at the site.

Tom Anderson, president of MySpace, thinks this branching out will only confuse consumers.

"People are always going to associate certain names with certain ideas and utilities," he said. "Their branding is too strong; they've done their job too well."

Mr. Anderson, according to this link is "a graduate of University of California, Berkeley with two Bachelors Degrees’ in English and Rhetoric. Anderson later received his Masters Degree in Film Theory at the University of California, Los Angeles." I wonder if he took a class on satire and parody? I've emailed him for more comments about Pricekut. This should be interesting.

Here's the Tribune story in full:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0402210130feb21,1,7506479.story?coll=chi- techtopheds-hed

(That link, unfortunately, requires registration, but it's free and relatively painless.)

Also, I learned today that on February 4th, someone registered the pricekut.com domain. Now, if only Amazon would sue, my work would be complete...

UPDATE - Sun 22 Feb 2004, 19:20 PST: Ok now this is getting weird. I emailed Tom Anderson of Myspace, and asking him about the Tribune story where he'd commented on Pricekut. Here's his reply:

hi Brian,

I wasn't even aware I'd commented on it. I looked it up and read it was a fake; i.e. there is no rela pricekut feature being developed. :)

Tom

Which begs the question, did the reporter who wrote the Tribune story actually talk to Anderson? I've emailed Anderson again to confirm, and I've emailed Kraig Kujawa, the reporter. We'll see . . .

UPDATE - Tue 24 Feb 2004, 10:50 PST: The Chicago Tribune issued a correction today regarding its erroneous story on Saturday. Read all about it in today's brianstorms blog.

Posted by brian at 08:23 PM | Comments (10)
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