That One Friend Who Owns A Zune

The other night, comedian Donald Glover from the NBC show "Community" did stand-up here at Northeastern, and he was hilarious. The reason I bring this up is because one of the jokes he made referenced "That one person in your group of friends that owns a Zune instead of an iPod" and how that person tries to explain to you why and the benefits of a Zune but no one cares. Well, my friends and I all started dying laughing because I am that friend with a Zune and always get teased for it. However, when I talk to my friends about Zunes vs. iPods, many issues similar to those discussed in class yesterday arise. Most of my friends admit to having an iPod simply because it is the most popular and visible music player on the market. Until they see my Zune or I mention having one, there are some people who apparently don't even know there are other music players besides iPods and iTunes. When I show them that a Zune is basically the same thing as an iPod, but I have a radio tuner, a very long battery life, and it was cheaper than an iPod, people are usually impressed and sometimes even start to reconsider why they have an iPod. I thought this was very similar to some of the examples we talked about in class, of people being a little clueless or uninformed and just following the crowd. A few examples we talked about included Professor Lazer's example of the aquarium lines, and an example from the class about people waiting outside a classroom door upon seeing even just one or two people from their class waiting outside, because they just assume that the previous class must still be in there. When it comes to things like iPods, a lot of people just assume they're the only product on the market worth buying, since they're the most publicized, and the majority of people have them. Most people (including myself!) are not very well-versed in the technical aspects of computers, mp3 players, etc. so they trust what they see most commonly on tv and amongst their friends, creating an information cascade. Possibly because of this information cascade that is very difficult to break, Microsoft recently announced that they are no longer going to be making Zunes. I assume this is because they are simply not selling enough to make a profit and keep up with Apple. Perhaps if people weren't so inclined to frequently follow the crowd and the popular information available about products, this wouldn't have happened.