Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 20, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The operator of the scandal and rumour homepage, Nick Ciarelli, agreed on the condition that he would not have to disclose his sources. The corporation agreed to this point. The reason for the legal dispute was Apple products and innovations announced in advance via the site, which are subject to the strictest secrecy within the corporation. “In addition to Think Secret, there are a huge number of homepages that distribute similar content, especially about the iPhone. Apple is not showing a deft touch here. The response from the community is a game of cat and mouse. If one domain is shut down, the next one goes online with the same content”, explains brand expert Markus Hübner, managing director of Brandflow http://www.brandflow.at.
Especially in the age of Web 2.0, the rumour mill is bubbling. Hübner elaborates: “The community is alive. Apple will not be able to prevent that.” The bulge of communication is no longer manageable for corporations such as Apple. “Considering control through restrictions is not a contemporary approach. A sensible dialogue with Apple fans, jointly shaping product innovations and open-source marketing would be significantly more sensible than suing. Such mistakes remain in consumers’ minds and damage the brand”, Hübner says.
Ciarelli stresses that he is satisfied with the settlement and that the closure of the site is to the benefit of both parties. Industry insiders nevertheless speak of censorship. The overwhelming power of the corporation, which had already filed the lawsuit in 2005, had exerted strong pressure on Ciarelli. He now wants to concentrate more intensively on his studies again and take on other journalistic tasks. “In my view, Apple made a strategic mistake with the lawsuit against Think Secret. This story draws the community’s focus to second-hand information because Apple is giving it the signal that such information is actually relevant. That means that in future parts of the community will obtain news about Apple from other sources similar to Think Secret”, says Hübner.
