You may not know it but today is a special day. No, Google hasnt unleashed another Panda update on us. Today is Tell the Truth Day. Duh! The premise of the day is simple " to go through the day without telling a lie. Sounds like a Jim Carrey film! The whole concept got me thinking of what would happen if the world's leading technology businesses were forced to participate. What secrets would they reveal?? I suspect it would go a little something like this
Apple
We admit it. The iPad actually serves no purpose whatsoever. Too big to be portable, and not powerful enough to be useful, we cant find a practical use for it either. The truth is we just desperately needed another device to sell with the iPhone cannabalising our iPod sales (oops!). Steve was at a complete loss for ideas, so we just decided to merge together the worst parts of two of our most popular products - the iPhone & Macbook. Which just goes to show that we could literally sell crap on a stick, and our minions would buy it by the millions. In fact, we thought about calling it the Crapbook, but that would take the joke a little too far.
Lots of people wonder why Google is so intent on breaking into the social market place. The whole Facebook rivalry is grossly overstated. Its got nothing to do with that. The reality is that we algorithm nerds were highly unpopular at school. And ever since, weve been desperately craving social acceptance in some way, shape or form. So we're trying to right that wrong via the only way we know how " the Internet. Unfortunately, given that none of us ever actually learned basic social skills, every social network we build fails. But fear not! Google+ will change everything, and we will finally feel the social acceptance we missed out on!" *sobs*
By day we run one of the worlds most vibrant social networks. But very few people are aware of our subsidiary business " Beggr. Beggr employs an army of homeless people throughout the country to collect and crowd source the funds needed to keep Twitter running and operational. Without Beggr Twitter simply couldnt exist, because God knows we have no freakin idea how to make money out of this thing!
Bing
Ok, ok. Yes, its true. We copy Google. We tried to buy the bastards out, but not even Bill Gates could afford a takeover bid. Bill was just so damn used to buying and destroying competitors, that he simply didnt have a viable strategy to counter a superior competitor. In the end, he gave up, copied Google, and pretended to not care about business any more by feigning an interest in philanthropy. But we all know he just couldnt handle losing
Poor Bing. While they cop heat for copying Google, weve become the worlds hottest Internet property based almost exclusively on thievery and plagiarism. First, we took Friendster & MySpaces concept, and added a twist courtesy of the Winklevosses (thanks lads). But why stop there. Ever since weve been copying all the best bits of emerging start ups and claiming it as our own. Photos came from Flickr. Groups came from Yahoo. Places came from Foursquare. And deals came from Groupon. Why innovate? Its so much easier to just imitate?
Nintendo
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lameazoid/310446979/
We're sorry Sony. We know you've had nothing but trouble since the PlayStation network was hacked. But if truth be told... we admit it was us! It was all a diversion tactic you see. While the Wii has been a runaway success, sales have been dropping of late. We needed to reinvent the Wii to reinvigorate sales. So we created the Wii U. The only thing was that while other consoles such as the Kinect have moved completely away from controllers, the Wii U comes with the biggest freakin' controller you've ever seen. Heck... it's a tablet! And the thought of what the critics would make of it scared the bejesus out of us. So we did what any normal company would do. We hacked the network of a major competitor, which meant Nintendo was out of the headlines, and Sony was in the thick of the action. If nothing else, we believe the Wii U has one crowning achievement - we finally found a practical use for the tablet. Take that Steve Jobs!
JC Penney
We knew exactly what we were doing. Duh! And were planning to do it again as soon as this whole thing blows over. Sure, we got bitch slapped by Google. But hey weve already got our rankings back. When you spend enough dough in AdWords, Google has a very short memory. And whats a 90 day penalty against widespread No. 1 rankings during the holiday season. Its fair to say all our Christmas came at once (literally) last holiday season. Speaking of which, its time to start planning for the 2011 holiday season. Anyone know a good black hat agency?
Nokia
"We never got the whole smart phone trend. Evidently! At Nokia we firmly believe that the phone is for talking, not for browsing the Internet. Few people truly understand our corporate strategy, which is to rebuke the smart phone and everything it stands for altogether. Instead we are firmly focused on the dumb phone market. Which is precisely the reason we teamed up with Microsoft. We couldn't think of a better partner to help us fulfill our vision for the future. Onward and upward!"
I enjoyed reading the “truths”. I think Google story is the funniest. I liked very much the humor behind the different point of view of these well known products in this article.
Hi James,
Wow you sure are getting things off your chest in this post. Way to go! We can only imagine what stories would be let out of the bag if these huge companies told the truth.
Tell the Truth Day? It came and went – I didn’t even know about it!
Regards
Catherine
Which, Catherine, could make for the wonderful statement that “tell you the truth, I didn’t know about tell the truth day” 🙂