The digital hunt

July 11, 2008 on 2:21 pm | In Computing | No Comments

Today, the 3G iPhone is officially being thrown onto the Swiss market and I witnessed a phenomenon that I never saw before: continuous updates on sold out stores.

It was naturally clear that macprime was going to somehow report on the new 3G iPhone launch. However, with the “power from the streets” this didn’t turn out to be just a plain report as you’d see it in a newspaper, instead the news on sold out stores continuously came in through the feed reader. In other words, the booty has become the hunting weapon for social shopping.

People who didn’t get their iPhone in the midnight sale started to stand in line in front of other stores as early as 3:00 a.m. to be the first in the morning. When I rode my Tram to work I could see people in front of the Orange store lining up just to get into the store. When I get home from work, probably no shop in Zurich will have any iPhones left.