Michael Arrington has made no secret of his ambitions to off CNET. The TechCrunch editor might want to spend some time studying the ways of his prey, though, before he moves in for the kill. For example: Gadget critics normally spend time with the devices they report on before reviewing them. Citing an embargo he didn't care to observe, Arrington panned the Flip Mino camcorder without ever touching it.
"Questions are being raised around the halls of 4 Times Square about Flip.com, Condé Nast's new teen networking site. Pointing to small traffic numbers and a whispered lack of enthusiasm from higher ups about the project, despite a heavy financial investment in the site's technology, naysayers believe Flip has so far been a bit of a flop. 'Thank God it wasn't my idea,' said one insider." Shockingly, publisher Jane Grenier claims not to be worried: "Our determination of whether this site is successful is not based on a panic check of [unique visitors]." Good luck with that! [WWD]
It's Take Your Kids to Work Day, and nowhere is that tradition better observed than at 4 Times Square. Today every limb on the Conde Nast tree had to prepare some sort of activity for the children, which meant, for example, ice cream sundaes at Bon App tit and creating Flip books at Flip.com. (Anything for page views!) Anyway, one Nastie snipes, "It's so crazy that all of these editors have to spend time preparing for kids to come through," as they're trying to do things, like, you know, close issues? And Anna Wintour was spotted escaping from the nightmare via Town Car this afternoon, accompanied by two older men—with nary a sign of her Charles or Bee. Our gay on the scene reports: "She was holding her sunglasses. I yelled 'I love you Anna!' She actually smiled and waved. One of the men said, 'Ah your adoring fans.'" Maybe she had the visiting children clean out the fashion closet? No Red Bull being passed out this year, though.—Doree
Conde Nast's Flip has a new plan to get teenage girls to visit the site and make some pretty Flipbooks: bribe them! Between now and May 31, anyone signing up on the site will be automatically entered to win a $25,000 college scholarship. Not only that, but the site will also be giving away a laptop computer each week,. Sadly, there's a catch: "To win a laptop, girls must create one or more Flipbooks on the Flip Web site. The more Flipbooks created by each member, the greater their chances are of winning during one of the weekly prize drawings." Get cracking, so Flip doesn't fail! We're also enjoying the way that Flip describes itself in the press release that went out today.
Conde Nast's troubled social networking site, Flip.com (oh and fuck off, Gawker ombudsman), came in with a marketing strategy. They identified 5,000 trendsetting teenage girls around the country, and they sent them a very special present: exclusive Flip.com Mimobot flash drive of their very own. One problem, for starters: these tweens may not have known what the flash drives were promoting. Flip? Is that a cute new Mr. Friendly character?
Attention, teenage girls! Did you make your Flipbook on Flip.com yet? No? You say you don't even know what a Flipbook is? Yeah. Us neither. And apparently the suits inside Conde Nast are having trouble figuring out why they spent millions, and years, on this lame website! A source at 4 Times Square tells us that execs were recently overheard "seeming bummed about the big money investment not paying off." The source adds: "How could that site cost millions? That seems really crazy." Crazy, indeed. But maybe not to our good friend Doctor72.
Hey, teenage girls! Conde Nast has a new place for you to hang out! It's totally rad! You post photos of yourself, and you join clubs, and make flipbooks! And did we mention post pictures? No ... no, it's not MySpace! This is different. Like we said, already, you can make flipbooks. You can't make flipbooks on MySpace! Oh yeah, and you can buy discounted Teen Vogue subscriptions! Okay, also, it's only for teenage girls! No pervs here! Well, except for this guy. Whatevs, he probably just likes hanging out with teenage girls! Like, rad!
