Mike Davidson takes talking head Jason Calacanis to task for using his large Twitter following to dupe his readers into thinking that he got his hands on Apple’s iPad before the device was actually announced. If you’re familiar with Calacanis, then you probably already know that he’ll stoop as low as he needs to go in order to generate buzz, but for the thousands wholly unaware of his antics, his tweets were taken at face value and were subsequently picked up by the Wall Street Journal and others.
The tweets included:
Davidson writes:
For someone who seems so dead set on being a lot more influential than he actually is, it’s the height of irony that Jason would do something like this. The fact that it occurred only on Twitter and was a lot more believable than it could have been if it were really just an altruistic joke really tells us all we need to know about the motivations here. It went something like this:
- There’s a huge Apple event coming up and nothing stirs press like a huge Apple event.
- I have an ego, a Twitter account, and a company to promote (probably in that order) so I’ll post some fake, but borderline believable stuff and see what kind of linkage/followership I can get.
- If things get out of hand, I’ll make my tweets increasingly outlandish and just claim it’s all a big joke and anyone who believed it is an idiot.
Calacanis rants unintelligibly about Apple fanboys, openly admits its linkbait
Mon, Feb 1, 2010
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