The Viral Model

‘let’s look at the iPod Nano’, said Steve Jobs on 1 September 2010, at a media event in San Francisco. Steve, who had eschewed his typical black mock-turtleneck for a black crewneck sweater, had his sleeves rolled up as he walked the audience through a multimedia presentation describing the first five generations of the iPod Nano. With the fifth generation iPod Nano displayed on a screen behind him, Jobs said, ‘We’d like to make it smaller and we’d like to make it better’. Jobs continued to describe the changes, including the elimination of the ‘click wheel’ (the interface allowing iPod users to scroll through songs, change music, control volume, and so on) in favor of a multi-touch display and the addition of a clip on the back of the iPod so that it was ‘instantly wearable’. At roughly 1.5 by 1.5 inches, the new iPod was 46 per cent smaller and 42 per cent lighter than its predecessor. ‘No more armbands when you want to use it for athletics’, declared Steve. Joking with the audience, and displaying a number of Screenshots of iPod applications (including an FM radio behind him), Steve said ‘It’s got a clock ... our Board of Director members is going to clip it onto an armband as a watch’. The audience chuckled at Steve’s mentionof the iPod as a watch.