Happy 1st Birthday, Sony Insider

One year ago today, Sony Insider opened its doors with the article “Sony DADC To Expand Indiana Blu-Ray Facility,” and the rest is history. The site has come so far since that posting a year ago, and we’ve been behind some of the biggest Sony product discoveries such as the touchscreen Walkman, Flex OLED videos, Wireless HD, 400 disc Blu-Ray changer, the Vaio TT and more. Thank you “A” for some of these stories – you know who you are. It’s just not about the product leaks though, its about pushing the bar and redefining the way consumers look at a company. Articles such as, “The Real Problem With The Sony Retail Experience, or “Are You A Consumer Electronics Insider?,” and the interviews with Rick Clancy were something truly different and made this less of a blog and more like a magazine.

I also have to give enormous credit to Stan and Richard (early on) for being there alongside me to bring the best of the best to this site. They are true heroes in my eyes, and have been extremely supportive. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Stan during our CES 2009 experience and I knew I made a true friend. We worked together and brought you some of the best coverage possible, and I think it was a total success. It is very unusual for a site that was a little more than six months old to bring that much to the table. We had a total blast and connected with alot of people at Sony. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

A little about the history – months before the end of ATRACLife I purchased the domain name Sony Insider for $8.88. I remember wanting to do it because I had limited myself in the past with the other sites because we were only covering certain aspects of technology and not something bigger, like an entire brand. I also felt confident enough in buying the domain name because I had a gut feeling things were different now with Sony, as they proved to me in the past, and the way they spoke to their consumers. I felt like I could make Sony Insider, and as long as it wasn’t overtly negative, they would treat it like the valuable consumer resource it is and cater to it accordingly. My dream came true when, after only a few months of running the site, I was contacted by the Corporate Communications team. Their enthusiasm and guidance with the site has been very powerful, and very exciting. The consumers can see it too, which really gives that human side to the company that I’ve been spending so many years trying to deliver.

It feels like there are an overwhelming number of technology blogs out there. The news is first come, first serve and it can be difficult to catch up even if you miss a week. The world needed a true voice and a true sense of community for the Sony brand. It was almost impossible to find a well-designed, yet clear and unbiased source for the latest Sony news on the Internet – information was very scattered and reminiscent of the corporate structure found within Sony during the mid to late 90’s. Many silos, but none of them were speaking to one another. Often, you would find incredible product reviews, recommendations for future products, or compilations of software issues that seemingly went unnoticed across various forums. Sony Insider is about creating unity by centralizing the news and the people’s voice.

It had to be something different, something that nobody else was doing.

At one point, Akio Morita once said that “A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.”

I agree with that, but Mr. Morita’s sentiment has to now adapt with the current consumer electronics atmosphere. It is obvious that a company cannot afford to be oversensitive to the whimsical desires of a concentrated group and must maintain their original vision, but the corporate world has woken up and realized that the people’s voice isn’t just found in surveys anymore, but rather their natural discussions found on blogs, forums, and so forth. This new style will extend for decades to come and is what I consider to be the humble beginnings of an untaught era in consumer and corporate relations. I truly believe Sony’s outreach to Sony Insider is proof of this sentiment; instead of Sony asking me to shut the site down as I once feared, we are sitting here discussing it instead.

The primary goal of Sony Insider is to create an atmosphere where people can come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire the ability to influence this brand through their feedback. We still have a long way to go before things are at the level I desire, but anything can happen if Sony Insider and Sony work hard enough to achieve that vision. With Sony’s cooperation I feel that things will only get better for the site and its users.

To our readers, old and new, who have been there from my other ventures, or are walking along with us now, thank you for being there and reading. Thank you for commenting, keeping us motivated, and wanting us to bring even more to the table than before. Without your visits and support, Sony Insider would cease to exist. I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store.