iTunes MP3 Sales Declining

Forrester Research in an attempt to peddle their market research, released a press release that included some summary findings about iTunes:

“Since January 2006, the number of monthly transactions declined 58 percent, while transaction size fell 17 percent, leading to a 65 percent overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue. With only two years of full data, it is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music.”

Unfortunately, they totally underestimated the speed at which news, particularly, bad news can spread on the web. They very quickly started to backpeddle and to contradict themselves.

Gmail Opens Up

A post on digg by Wisam stating that Gmail had moved out of beta and that anyone could sign up, got the whipped the online world into a right frenzy. Unfortunately, after nobody was able to signup it materialised that it was only open in Austrailia, New Zealand, Japan and Egypt.

Wisam did the right thing and posted another story to try and clear up the mess he’d created. Good work fella!

WiFi Networks Bad For Your Health

I think I caught this one early, as this story started life in a free paper in London. The story spread like wildfire around the net, even though it was blatantly wrong. Luckily it wasn’t long before the boffins put the luddites in their place.

And finally…

15 Year Old Becomes Google’s Youngest Employee

I’m still disappointed that this story didn’t turn out to be true. 15 year-old Tom Vandetta realised that fake press releases could be used to fool Google’s news system, so he made one up about himself:

“(I-Newswire) - 15 year old student, Tom Vendetta has been hired by search engine giant Google Inc. The student will receive a lowered salary, which will be placed into a bank account for future education, said Google CEO Larry Page. When asked what role Vendetta will play at the Tech Giant’s offices, Page said he wouldnt have a role at the Main Offices. Instead he would work from his home in the New Jersey suburbs. Vendetta will be incharge of working with recent security flaw’s in Google’s beta e-mail service, “Gmail”. Google said they first found out about him when they discovered the student’s blog, at http://tomvendetta.be. The media giant said they looked forward to working with Vendetta’s expertise in JavaScript and AJAX.”

Unfortunately, the story got picked up by more sources than he’d planned and before he knew it his ‘achievement’ was all over the web! Hopefully, he will still end up landing that dream job at Google when he gets a bit older!

I hope you enjoyed my alternative take on the news of 2006. Please feel free to leave a comment in the section below.

Continue Reading This Post:12

Subscribe To RSS Feed Updates (What is RSS??)

Bookmark & Share

Related Posts

• Friday Fun: MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski Refuses To Read Paris Hilton Story
• Video Of BBC iTunes 'Expert' Now Available
• Roundup Of All The Crazy Playstation 3 Stories. Aren’t You Glad You Pre-Ordered?!!
• Show Me Your Desktop, Arpit Jacob
• Last 1,000 Pixels on MillionDollarHomepage.com go for $38,100
• Firefox For Mobiles Coming Soon?
• Friday Fun: Don’t Talk On Your Phone At A Concert