Too much hype. I've never seen anything like this live up to the hype. All the great (popular) products that we use came about in an organic, almost underground manner. There were no "launches" or big announcements. People just started using them and sharing them in a natural way. Tell me one product that launched with this much hype and lived up to it.
But yes. I also don't see why we have to discuss an obvious advertorial ... I guess that's what passes for "new tech" these days, whatever has a big enough army of flaks behind it.
I think GP meant "product" in a What'sApp\Facebook\Instagram sense of the word. These all (as far as I recall) sort of spread without big "this is gonna change everything" hype\announcements (up to a certain point, I've no idea what that point was - something between ten and a hundred million users?), they just started getting used by people because they were fun and engaging.
The iPhone might be the exception that proves the rule. The original iPod was OS X only, didn't have as much space as a nomad, etc. But people used it organically and pretty soon it took over.
The iPhone would probably have been Samsung's instead of Apple's without the whole iPod/iTunes/Movies business.
