Linkpile

• Consumers Skeptical About ‘Free’ Products: Bundling strategy “leads consumers to devalue the items when they’re sold individually.”
• Vintage T-Shirt Road Trip: Destee-Nation Shirt Co. blog documenting travels — and new T designs from obscure businesses encountered. Earlier Consumed on Destee-Nation here.
• Tumblrs with book deals – gutenbait?: “Furthermore, Give Us A Book Deal offers a regular stream of idiotic book deal-bait tumblr ideas such as ‘Rules for My Future Dog’ and ‘Slutty Ninjas.'”
• The Term Personal Brand Makes Me Want To Kick Myself In The Face.: “Is it me, or are people starting to sound like press releases?” Bracing rant. [Thx Chip G!]
• Social technology: a way of life . . . or just a damn hobby?: “It’s not a way of life, it’s a useful communications tool.” Feels weird to agree with Josh Bernoff about something. But: Yeah.
• We’re Swayed by Confidence More than Expertise: “This tendency led advisors to make their advice more and more precise in subsequent rounds – but not more accurate.” Ariely describes study. I think this is intuitive, and explains the entire guru industry. If you want to be a guru, it’s much more important to be confident than to have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. People want to believe. Believe it.
• Not A Box: In fact: A lamp. Kinda cool. Via Rebecca on FB Consumed page.
• Report: Twitter Users Buy More Music: Seems like correlation, not causality, to me.
• Studio 360 Gay Flag Redesign: I wouldn’t change it. But what do I know?
• OXO Office Supplies: “Easier” stapling, etc. Progress? Or just fresh SKUs?
• The Bar Code Turns 35 – NYTimes.com: “The adoption of the bar code was gradual. For years, businesses were hamstrung by shoppers who refused to buy bar-coded products, worrying that they might be cheated at the checkout counter without price labels. At the time, ‘the vision of the bar code as some sort of surveillance device with ominous social implications was quite resonant,’ said T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian at Rutgers University. But with the advent of Google Earth and global tracking devices, ‘it now seems comparatively innocuous.'”

These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.