Open Source as a Style

From OPU Wiki

A marketing technique employed recently in an attempt make a product or corporate presence more "urban" by mimicking notable open-source web sites or products.

Open-source as a style is new marketing technique which has recently developed on the internet by various businesses large and small. Considering the "open-source community" akin to hippies, generation-x, vegans or Volkswagen owners, corporations now present their online presence and often their products in what they deem an "open-source style" involving web page formatting often associated with open-source communities or famous open-source web projects like the iPod, Wikipedia, Google, Firefox and Open Office. Often linked to the Linux Operating System, the supposed open-source style is thought by some individuals and corporations to be a calling card of the "free" "young" "wild" technophile community. Seeking to plug into this supposedly vast and untouched reservoir of marketing opportunities, major companies purposely design their websites and products to mirror the style often used in open-source projects in an attempt to insinuate their product or presence into the community and gain a foothold in the market. Often utilizing social means to spread hype, these corporations use viral videos, podcasts, forums and chat networks to spread their products. Often clinging to a "has-been" ideal of "urban" style, these attempts infuriate consumers with even the slightest common-sense and attract mostly the unaware or uninitiated. Since the proportion of social internet users who fit the latter is growing, companies can often garner great success simply by grazing on the leftovers at the bottom of the barrel. Typically associated with "noob" or "newbie" characterizations, consumers who are open about their use or approval of corporations which utilize these tactics are often viewed upon as generally inferior and are left to associate only with those seen as within the same social standing.

Open-source as a style targets elite technology "gurus" but generally succeeds only by attracting consumers who seek to appear to be within that demographic. These people are looked down upon by the actual techno-elite as pretenders and disapprove of such a facade.

Links

parm.net (http://www.parm.net/web2.0/)