This Week’s Sign That The Cloudocalypse Is Upon Us
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Loading ...Apple’s ad for their consumer sync-your-life service jumped out at me for its cloudliness:
The Cloudy World of Mobile Me
Note the use of the word “cloud” in 2 of the 3 blurb columns, and the central cloud image. The Cloud is now a sales tool for the world’s hippest, consumer-savviest, aluminum-friendly tech company.
And now I will commence to wax nostalgic and oversell the importance of this advertisement:
Back in the Nineties, I was a big fan of this little old thing called the Internet, before it become the bright shining series of tubes we all know and love. I would drive family, friends and co-workers to distraction by extolling the wonders of being able to communicate, share and learn over the intertubes. As I was living at the time in Florida, which is a long, long, LONG way from Silicon Valley, the omens of my vindication came in strange forms:
- going to TGI Friday’s in Broward and seeing a stack of “Do You Yahoo?!” beer coasters on the bar. I promptly grabbed a stack of the blue ovals to take home, like Dr. Hoovey in Horton Hears A Who being excited about having some evidence that the strange world he believes in actually exists;
- walking across the Andrews Ave/New River bridge in downtown Fort Lauderdale during one of those endless outdoor beer and fish festivals that South Florida constantly hosts and being stunned when I glanced at the bridge railing and saw graffiti which read, “http//:TYRONE”. I don’t know who Tyrone was, but from the bug in the scheme portion of his URI I assumed he wasn’t some software engineer who had been drafted into his company’s outbound marketing team. I promptly snapped a picture of the graffiti, knowing that I might not believe it myself if I didn’t have evidence.
Nowadays, the Internet is everywhere, a part of the world culture, and probably spraypainted on many bridges, but it was a strange, nerdish byway back then, so finding signs that the Internet would become a mass phenomenon was heady stuff.
So how does my Florida experience with “advertising the Internet” (not to be confused with Internet advertising) compare over a decade later with the Apple ad experience?
I’m assuming this isn’t the first example of consumer “cloudvertising” What else is out there?
For the record, Jungle Disk’s web site doesn’t mention the cloud on the front page, the “Why It’s Better” page or the “How It Works” page.
Is this Apple ad “chicken” or “egg”? Has APPL’s outbound marketing team concluded that their growing fanbase is savvy to the benefits of the Cloud? Or is the strategic marketing team driving this, hoping for a cloud takeover because of some presumed weakening of MSFT, etc, etc, etc?
Of course, this ad was shown within a software application, as opposed to showing up in a suburban restaurant, so its less of an example of a meme going mainstream.
To me, this is one more, tiny sign of the inevitability of a cloud-based world, consumer and enterprise, regardless of whether that’s a good or a bad thing. It’s assimilation all the same.
At least this time around, its unlikely that there will be some AOL-like moment where we wake up in horror and realize that the noobs have ruined our clouds.
PS I’m happy to receive flames from any of the 32 nerds living in Florida, as we’ve probably already met, had beers and played D&D. It’s been too long, kids.
PSS Now I’m going to go out on the San Mateo Bridge and spraypaint “Mobile Me!” on the railing.
