Manual No More
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I’ve lived in the same apt going on 3 years. It’s been nice, but I’ve never been able to get reception on my phone. It’s always been one of those “dead zones” everyone is talking about. I’ve been through 4 phones in these 3 years–0 bars the whole time.
The other day while surfing the app store on iTunes I came across Fring, an app that among other things allows you to connect your phone to a WiFi network to make free VOIP calls. ”Wow!” I said to myself, “What a find. I can totally use this in my apt!” I downloaded the free app, but quickly ran into a roadblock. I didn’t want to pay for skype, but the app says “free calls”–was this just another disappointment in the legally ambiguous 2.0 world?
I went to the Fring section on iTunes–no help. I went to the Fring website–no help. WTF. I then googled “free calls fring iPhone.” Lo and behold–a consumer tutorial on YouTube gave me the exact step by step instructions I needed to solve my problem–legally and easily.
I think we’re seeing now with our plug-and-play, ADD, instrant gratfication culture, people want to solve probelms as they arrive, and look for the authentic voice of fellow consumers to answer their questions. No one is reading instruction manuals anymore–the connectivity of 2.0 world has alowed consumers to reach out and collaborate to solve problems.
Tags: apps, collaboration, YouTube
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Consumer Insight, New Media, Technology, Trends, crowdsourcing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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