interesting ... you dont see other companies saying this kinda stuff about other companies producs very often ... in public anyways

Congrats to Amazon.com for the Amazon Kindle being its top seller, but we have some product feedback... FA guides Peter Whittaker and Ed Viesturs tested their Kindles in the freezer for an upcoming Antarctica expedition and the devices failed. We hope next-generation Kindles can handle the elements! Call us if you need the team to test cold-weather prototypes in Antarctica. They leave next week. Thanks!

http://www.facebook.com/FirstAscent?ref=ts

Edited by bearbreeder on 12/29/2010 23:02:50 MST.

I think you see this sort of thing pretty often in the realm of social media. Where you sort of playfully talk about another product (and almost always joke about getting something free in return) while at the same time promoting something you're doing, in this case the trip to Antarctica. I think it helps seeing the people involved as people and promotes a sort of interaction between different companies and the customers.

I read Hugh Macleod's book, "Ignore Everybody" a couple weeks ago and one concept that flew off the page was using social media to allow companies to have intelligent conversations with their customers. EB is doing this in a rather tangential way, but still in the same vein I think. BPL does that in a very intensive way via these forums, which are just another form of social media.

Hugh Macleod is a very interesting character. He's an adman who had a habit of doodling on the back of his business cards which he has grown into a business in itself. http://gapingvoid.com/