elite

Dear Foursquare: BoomTown Is Mayor of "Gossip Girl" (And You're Not!)

Kara Swisher in News on March 10, 2010 at 5:17 am PT

On Monday night, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley speculated that a BlackBerry screen featured on the latest episode of the red-hot television potboiler, “Gossip Girl,” could be a veiled Foursquare moment. The text message on the screen reads, “Elizabeth Fisher just checked in at the Algonquin Hotel.” Sorry, Dennis, not so, as there is no time in the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite to check in, especially since they are all too busy checking each other out.

Pink PCs and Baseball Boys: These Microsoft Ads Are Growing on Me (But I Am Still a Mac!)

Kara Swisher in News on April 10, 2009 at 2:27 am PT

OK, the Lauren ad was a little too cute for its own good, and BoomTown has no interest in Giampaulo’s “really big hands.” But the latest installment of Microsoft’s real-people advertising campaign, called “Laptop Hunters”–this time a mother and son named Lisa and Jackson looking to score a computer–is pretty funny and sweet, and the main theme of hefty value over too-thin hipness is really starting to kick in. And while I cannot blame Microsoft for sticking to the Apple-Is-for-Value-Ignorant-Elites meme, I still wish that the messaging would move on from price to more important things such as how the software and hardware perform together.