“Everyone Else Has One” Is a Perfectly Good Reason to Buy an iPhone
This article’s main focus is the fact that if your friends are using a certain platform for something, it is probably a smart idea to use the same platform, for example, an iPhone. The author starts by explaining that he was always left out of games because while all of his friends had a Game Boy, he had a Game Gear. He then relates it to what it would be like now if all of your friends had a PS4, but you had an Xbox. If you are on a different platform than all of your friends, you won’t be able to communicate with them, as easy as they communicate with each other.
He then goes on to his main point of the article, phones. He talks about how convenient it is to have iMessages and Game Center, especially when all of his friends and family are using it too. While each type of phone has its specific apps and services, such as the iPhone has FaceTime, Photo Stream, and AirDrop, they can usually only be used with people that have the same type of phone. For example, you can’t AirDrop with someone who has a Samsung and uses Samson’s S Beam instead. The author states that “Cell phone users should move in herds to make the most of their environments.” So whether they want to use AirDrop or S Beam, it should depend on what their friends are currently using.
In my opinion, this is a perfect example of herding/cascading effects that we talked about in class. It can be compared to the restaurant example given in the beginning of Chapter 16. The restaurant example has you intending to go to restaurant A based on your own personal research about restaurants in a different town. Once you get to the town, you see that no one is in restaurant A, but people are in restaurant B, and you decide to go to restaurant B. Likewise, if you decide on buying a samsung based on research, but none of your friends are using iPhones, it will convince you to buy an iPhone instead. This only has the potential to occur when your friends make decisions before you, who were probably influenced by their friends as well. If they saw friends that they trust using iPhones, they might assume that their friends have some knowledge that iPhones are better than other phones.
Using iPhones also have a Direct-Benefit Effect on the people that use them. If you buy an iPhone instead of a Samsung, you can directly benefit from all of the features that an iPhone has to offer between iPhones (such as iMessage, AirDrop, etc.). Users will be able to benefit from compatibility between phones.
http://gizmodo.com/everyone-else-has-one-is-a-perfectly-good-reason-to-b-1333604115