Product launches are so often slimy in their approach to WOW or be cool, especially when they are looking to out hype their rival.  Sports drinks and video games are unabashedly manipulative, but when talking about tech products, it gets even hairier.  Which is why I was so impressed today when I followed a simple click through for the Kin.  Now, I am an iPhone user and probably won't be switching anytime soon (especially not with the new 4G double camera model coming out sometime before 2020), but I am interested in all the devices that I acknowledge as better than the iPhone in many ways.  The Kin campaign, known from here on out as "the journey," got my interest immediately.

First noticed on the iLike site (after uninstalling the iLike sidebar for reasons that I told the website redirect were related to it slowing down my system) which redirected me to MySpace, a little website that used to, I guess, service the social networking crowd, I clicked play and watched the first trailer.  I must admit, the tag on the whole campaign really caught my interest.  It speaks to a philosophical question that is both timely and wise to explore: Who are our online friends and are they really friends?  You then look down and see Rosa looking up at you and she is your daughter or girlfriend or neighbor or what have you.  Identifiable, archetypal.

The journey examines many of the faces that are our social network.  The ex, the flirt (the word "stalker" is currently unacceptable after Kelly Oxford rocked the tweet and got lashed from some concerned folks with dried up humor reserves), the mom or quirky adult figure, and, well, that's it for now.  I believe they are releasing 2 episodes a week for 8 weeks until the official product launch. I have a read several ad blogs and branding blogs and they all seem to be just as impressed as I am with the campaign.  The gist being that "the journey" doesn't hit you over the head with either branding or product placement.  It is coming at you with a strictly webisode style promotion, like: "here's Rosa, she's sweet, she's real, she's got a KIN and we're taking her around to answer some questions about where we are at with social networking."  It's perhaps not a new approach, but it worked for me.  Just watching some of the very well placed shots of the KIN doing things and running applications made me want one.  It actually did its job without having to try to suck my soul through a straw.

Apparently, agency two fifteen (formerly T.A.G) has signed on with Microsoft to really push in a new direction.  If they do end up sucking my soul through a straw, then, well played, agency two fifteen.  Your oddly all-numeric new name is creepy enough to bring back some X-Files imagery, but you are doing the job that needs to be done without making me feel owned.  In the meantime, I'll be waiting for the next installment of Rosa's Big Adventure.

I have reached out to Rosa on Facebook to see if she might be up for an interview on the campaign and will follow up accordingly.

The most recent issue of Wired magazine has an article on emerging rules of etiquette in our Web 2.0 environment. While its clear that it's a hot topic and one worthy of continued discussion, there remains something from Old Tech that could underwrite the rules that become applicable to these new avenues of communication.

That is, I spied a sign posted on plywood walls used to enclose a construction site at a busy intersection in Brooklyn. It said, "Lost Dog," and went on to describe in an artful print out, complete with a picture, the dogs breed, its idiosyncrasies and a description of how it went missing. While this is an Old Tech appeal to the neighborhood, whoever compiled the document did something extraordinary: they wrote in Sharpie over their public notice, "We found her. Thanks."

While it might have well been just as good to tear off the print out, there was a very humane sense of good will and completion in being notified that the collective "us" had accomplished the mission of returning this beloved dog to its rightful owner.

Likewise, when it comes to the general ease with which we can add our comments to Web artifacts such as friend's status updates, their blog posts or twitters, or even mainstream media articles, what seems to still be downright alienating from all of this is those statements like, "We found her. Thanks."

That is, a status update is not just completed by the act of being commented on; a text or email message is not sent; a blog post or its comments has not been read; a dropped phone call is not over until, at some level, all of these ways of communicating have been issued an "signal received, end of line."

As such, a rule of thumb added to the Wired article for etiquette in these things is this: make it known when a text has been received with a simple response, add a closing comment to comment threads, find a way to say the tide and true "goodbye" to drop calls; in short, make it known that in cyberspace, you, the originator of the transmission says, "10-4. Over and out."