Tech Sites Will Believe Anything if it Looks (slightly) Original
Earlier today CrunchGear, MacRumors, TechMeme and a lot of other sites jumped the “We are getting more Apple Tablet news”-bandwagon. Major German electronics retailer MediaMarkt “accidentally” tweeted the name and pricing of Apple’s latest creation. MediaMarkt called it Apple iPad. My first reaction was, what an ugly name! My second reaction was how the teufel can a major European company make such a screw up.
Apparently no one from CrunchGear, MacRumors or other tech sites bothered to call MediaMarkt to verify this, but instead they instantly wrote a blog post about it, people retweeted and the hype began. Some said the iPad was too expensive, but the tweet had to be valid because T-Mobile sell iPhones in Germany. Besides it came from @media_markt_de so it had to be true. Right?!
The tweet said: Apple iPad – Ab 01. März bei Ihrem Media Markt für nur 499,- Euro im T-Mobile Complete L Vertrag (sonst 899,- Euro). Which roughly translates into Apple iPad from March 1st at Media Markt for 499 Euro with T-Mobile, without 899 Euro.
A lot of people went to @media_markt_de’s twitter page and grabbed a screen shot. Again no one bothered to look at the graphic in the background. If you look at the background graphics it says: 30 Jahre Media Markt (Media Markt’s 30th anniversary). MediaMarkt celebrated their anniversary in 2009. I gave the kind people at Media Markt in Ingolsstadt a call. “Tut mir leid. Das ist ein super fake” (No translation neccessary). I said to her that I bet they were swamped with phone calls regarding this. She said only one other had called them asking about it!
Twitter has now shut down the fake Media Markt account and Media Markt has issued a statement saying the tweet is a fake. Phoenix blogTechCrunch (Robin Wauters who is as close to the source as I am) has confirmed this. So guys…take a chill pill and be patient until tomorrow. Oh yeah. You don’t have to write a post instantly just to be the first. I’m more interested in the truth, than who wrote it first!
