The iPhone experience

I cannot believe myself that I am posting another blog about iPhone. I happened to be watching the live feed of people waiting outside the Palo Alto Apple store on Zooomr TV and I could feel the excitement and a sense of "I am going to be one of the first to make history in owning an iPhone" among the crowd. I also felt that it is the experience that counts more than the actual purchase of the iPhone. Folks like Scoble have been waiting in line since 9.30AM on Thursday for buying an iPhone at 6PM Friday and I can guarantee that he would have gotten more PR in this 36 hours than in the last 36 weeks. It was an excellent platform to pitch portals like Zooomr, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Digg, Pownce and many other startups that are into social networking and those that support the social networking space. I could see them distribute T-shirts, hats and jackets for their PR campaign and made sure that their company was recognized for it.
Ustream.tv also took this opportunity to drive traffic to their site by doing two things. First, they hosted the live show of the Apple store line in Palo Alto and second, they lured new users to sign up by giving away an iPhone for a lucky one signing up before 6PM on Friday, July 29, 2007. They really used this event to bring their company to mainstream audience. Great job guys!!!.
I am still not convinced that this phone is for me. For one, it is tightly integrated with iTunes which I hate and everything in it is proprietary. I am sure I would be blogging more about this.