An interesting discussion emerged under yesterday's post about Panasonic's insipid subway ad for its Lumix camera.

Recall, they say: "If it's got a ringtone, it's not a camera."

It's irritating in so many ways.

1. It's simply not true, under any reasonable definition of "camera."

2. As some have said, it's elitist, and that may be their intention. But the NYC subway is not a very elite environment. I expect to see ads for ambulance chasers and hemorrhoid medicine on the subway. Night school (so you can get a raise and move to Manhattan and stop taking the subway to Brooklyn?). There aren't many environments as proletarian as the NYC subway.

3. As a camera user, the ad makes me angry -- because no one is making the product I want to buy. I want a high quality, small camera like the Canon I carry in my knapsack pocket, with the communication capability of my Droid and the user interface of my iPhone. I've wanted this product since 2007 when I saw how easy the iPhone is. Three years later I want so much more. But we're stuck with thinking like Panasonic's. They think they know better than we do, they can tell us what is and isn't a camera. Either you anticipate all our needs, get real responsive or get out of the way.

4. It violates the prime directive of marketing -- the customer is always right. If you're going to tell me I'm wrong, you'd better convince me very quickly or I'm going to think you're an idiot and an asshole.

5. I don't care about Panasonic. I never intend to buy one of their cameras. But if instead they ran an ad for the product I want, I'd line up outside their store and plunk down the money a month in advance and overpay by a factor of 3 if they said, instead -- "We believe all cameras should have ringtones."

6. All it takes to make them toast is for Apple to make a deal with Canon or Google to convince Nikon to bake in Android. How much you want to bet both things are happening?

7. Basically I don't like the ad because it reeks of "We know better." I think the sub-text of the ad could be "We're dumb fucks." They pay money to tell me that! Oy!! Oy!! Oy!!

 6/2/2010; 4:22:18 AM.   .

Yesterday I wrote about our Internet Week panel at NYU.

It's going really well. We have two panelists signed up, and a bunch more invites out. I expect this to be a sell-out, blockbuster, fun, interesting and controversial. There may even be some news made here.

Every good panel needs a contrarian, someone who isn't a believer, who hasn't drunk the Kool Aid, one who will call us on our religion. We hope with respect and humor.

I couldn't think of anyone better than Gawker Media founder Nick Denton.

I've known Nick since the beginning of the blogging boom in the Bay Area, the mid-90s. Back then he was a tech entrepreneur, starting the aggregator Moreover. We both embraced syndication technology, Nick from the content side, me from the tech and community side.

I haven't always liked what he's done -- I'm thinking of the much-despised Valleywag, which viewed Silicon Valley as if it were Hollywood. It wasn't a good fit, yeah people sleep with each other, but they're actually married to their jobs. If you're looking for scandal, it's there, but it's not the personal who's-sleeping-with-who kind. At least not in the normal sense of "sleeping with." ">

But Valleywag is now good -- with Ryan Tate doing the editorial, and digging into the meaningful disasters of Silicon Valley.

Nick is very thoughtful, direct and much in the news. His latest controversy swirls around the role of sources and reporters in the new world of online news. Couldn't be more on-topic, in a contrary way, to "Sources Go Direct."

I couldn't think of anyone better to be our contrarian than Nick Denton, and he accepted, so here goes!

The panel will be at 2PM on Wednesday June 9, one week from today. At 20 Cooper Sq. It will be open, but seating will be limited. We'll have an invite page up very soon.

 6/2/2010; 3:19:01 AM.   .