Marketing Pilgrim

Google has opened its first retail location.

As reported by The Telegraph

Google has opened its first physical shop. The ‘Chromezone’ is a shop within a branch of Currys and PC World on London’s Tottenham Court Road, and is being used by Google to trial a new way of selling its own ‘Chromebook’ laptops.

It’s pretty simple in that the “store” is located inside another retail outlet (like having a Post Office “branch” located in a local shop but in a Googled up fashion). Makes sense. Chromebooks really need to be seen to be sold because they are unique so if there can be a chance to see one when someone is shopping for a PC or whatever then why not?

In yet another example of where the legal barriers that pop up are often more disruptive than technology itself, Facebook’s rollout of its Timeline service may be delayed until a court gives them the all clear.

paidContent reports

A federal judge refused late on Friday to grant a temporary restraining order to Timelines.com, a Chicago company that says Facebook’s timeline service may “eliminate” it. In return, Facebook has promised to limit access for now and to hold back on a full launch.

In refusing to grant the temporary restraining order, Judge Edmond Chang noted that Facebook has pledged not to broadly launch the feature before the parties appear in court again on Tuesday.

I often wonder where services like Facebook do their research to make moves like the recent overhaul of the service. I wonder if they are speaking to truly representative cross-sections of ALL users or if the service is really being built for the youngest users. Is Facebook simply ignoring the social habits and desires of a rather larger portion of their user base for the foreseeable future?

Why am I bothering even asking these questions? Well, a post over at paidContent titled “Facebook-Spotify Love-In Over-Estimated Users’ Social Lives” made me wonder about some assumptions we seem to be making about Facebook, in particular.

They are in our work places. They are in our churches. They are in our schools. They are in our government. And some times they are even in our families. There are naysayers everywhere. From this point on you have a choice, buy in to their garbage, or continue to play ball. Either way the choice is yours.