

After Nearly 100 Hours in Line, San Francisco’s First iPhone 5 - zpj5005
http://www.taskrabbit.com/blog/taskrabbit-news/after-nearly-100-hours-in-line-san-franciscos-first-iphone-5/

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baddox
And, a few hours later, I queued up at the same Apple store and walked out of
the store 20 minutes later with my iPhone 5. I suppose you can never know in
advance, but this time they still had hundreds in stock at noon.

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dmix
The scarcity of iPhones at launch is a fabrication. The primal human instinct
to be lured by scarcity even trumps rational minds.

~~~
baddox
It's not always a fabrication, it's just difficult to predict. It was quite
difficult to get an iPhone 4S for many days after its release.

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qq66
Just out of curiosity, why is there an emphasis on getting the iPhone so soon
after release (unless you are a developer who needs it for testing)? You'll
have your phone for 2 years -- why it is worth spending 2 whole work-weeks in
line to get the phone 5 days earlier?

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dguaraglia
Wrong, if you are the average Apple fanboy (and oh, don't get me started,
there are plenty of those, I sit for lunch every day with two of them) you'll
have the phone until the next one comes out. Why? Don't ask me, I guess it's
the success of Apple's selling its brand as a 'lifestyle'.

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ChuckMcM
Ok, that is some epic PR right there. Nice job. I really like a creative
campaign like that.

I was sort of wondering why one of the live flight tracking services didn't
jump on the Shuttle fly by in the Bay Area today to provide live tracking of
its location.

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golakers
Saw the line outside the Apple store here in Pasadena this morning and thought
"Task Rabbit".

Now the REAL question, how much did this guy make for his 90 hours of standing
in line???

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swang
I was going to say, "it's in the article" then I went back and realized it's
not in the post (I think it was in previous posts about it).

Kinda surprised since they could have done a lot of PR with, "THIS GUY MADE
1500!"

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Permit
I thought so too, but it turns out he only made about 16.70 an hour. All
things considered it was decent enough for a one time thing, but thats really
not that much money.

~~~
qq66
Many people have lots of trouble finding even $10 jobs these days! Plus, those
are the people who are most likely to sign up to be TaskRabbits. Furthermore,
he can read, sleep, play videogames, etc. while getting paid.

I'd say he got a great deal.

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eckyptang
I genuinely don't get it. Can someone please explain why the hell anyone would
queue up like this?

Food, water, medicine, supplies - yes.

Shiny telephone - no.

~~~
glhaynes
They consider it fun, something to do, a chance to hang around for a little
bit with some people that are interested in some of the same things they're
interested in.

~~~
nicolethenerd
This. When the iPhone 4 came out, I hung out in the queue for two hours even
though I wasn't planning to purchase a phone (I was keeping a friend company
who was in it for the long haul). It was a lot of fun and we met some cool
people.

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evanlivingston
Doesn't this PR work underline the darker side of TaskRabbit, or at least
clearly demonstrate that TakRabbit is leveraging income disparity to profit?
That is, some people either want or need money enough that they are willing
pull a 90 hour shift so someone else with spare money can get an expensive
phone arbitrarily early.

~~~
brcrth
So what's wrong with this? People are not being forced to do anything.

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kanamekun
This is really well done promotion and PR! You can see that TaskRabbit PR even
hired TaskRabbits to create further good visuals: "TaskRabbits gave pastries
to San Francisco’s iPhone 5 fans." This sort of focus on visuals is the mark
of a true professional.

And also, all photos were posted online and are available for reporters to use
for future stories. (The only thing that could make this better is if higher-
rez versions were available online, for reporters to download and use in
future stories.) Great job, guys!!

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codex
In an alternate universe, I spent five minutes pre-ordering my iPhone and had
it by 9:30 a.m. I feel like such a chump. I should have hired a TaskRabbit to
do that for me.

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biznickman
This was a great PR stunt by task rabbit!

