Dell has just teamed up with Vice Magazine, they of the Do’s & Don’ts, to create a new news site/blog/coolness injector called Motherboard.tv.
After those strange, heady days of the Dell Dude, the company has fallen off the coolness radar. In an effort to right this wrong, Dell hired Vice to create a website and news source – sort of a pop-up web presence – to talk about tech to a more plugged-in audience.
Dell needs the boost. Their revenue is down by 16% this quarter and their Studio line, while trendy, is facing tough competition by Apple and HP. Their market share is now about 26.3 percent, below HPs. Even their uber-laptop, the Adamo got bad reviews.
So what are those jokesters at Vice offering offing Dell? First, a little street cred. Motherboard will feature a videos of famous geeks – Richard Garriott appears below – along with “tech news” in a blog format. Dell also gets plenty of branding opportunities and access to “thought leaders” like dude in hoodies who make techno.
The website is a little odd and I wonder if Dell will be able to survive its interface with Vibe without wandering away confused. However, it’s an interesting example of media cross-marketing in an effort to gain a more aspirational crowd. Dell knows the low-end and the IT shop, but do they know how to sell to some skinny guy with a fixie?
Looks like another strap-on effort by Dell. They should shutter the doors, sell off the equipment, and give the money to the shareholders.
Wait! That was advice from another day, my bad.
Seriously. Dell makes good product but this effort smells from a mile away. Integrate it into your company, don’t try to only dress it up.
Why is facebook so buggy and slow these days? With growth, shouldn’t they be investing in architecture to keep up performance?
Why don’t you check out one of the 8 daily facebook posts? Think you’ll find something that matches your exact question. But not only facebook invests in growth instead of speed. Most companies prefer to see quantity instead of quality. I mean:”we added this and that feature” sounds more impressive “we tweaked something and now the sites faster.” Stopping apps from becoming bloated should be no. 1 priority though. No matter how many features you have, if you can’t use them it just fails.
Looks like a good idea for Dell… reconnect with geeks about stuff we care about
These episodes have been available at vbs.tv for months, on the motherboard channel – but a dedicated site/blog is a good idea too
Dell along with Rhapsody are my two least favorite companies. Pretty much everything they do seems either shady or just lame. This seems more lame to me.
I think the episode of Motherboard.tv with Little boots is infact the best. Also how about the one with that guy with the ear of his arm… Stelarc.. pretty good.
this is exploiting vice beyond comfort level
feel like i need to find a new magazine
one that has yet to ‘jump the shark’
If they can keep putting out quality content then I’m all aboard. The Kurzweil video was excellent. Dell has the money to do some really cool things and personally, I think this is going in the right direction.