Today, Nike announced a new way to reserve and purchase exclusive shoes. My intuition believes that this system is intended to relieve the mayhem around big shoe releases. 

All you have to do is wait for your local Nike Twitter account to “open” RSVP’s with a Tweet at a random time on the shoe’s launch date. You then send a DM with some information: the shoe’s hashtag, an ID number, and your shoe size. It’s that simple.

I expect Nike to soft-launch this system ASAP, and, hopefully, use it for a high-profile release (probably the Air Yeezy II’s) this Summer.

This is an innovative use of Twitter and a great example of using networks to solve real problems for new cultural groups. I’m excited.

Read More

If you know or follow me, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a huge Hip-Hop fan. I listen to a lot of it. I really enjoy it.

I’ve always wondered why all music with rapping is considered Hip-Hop. It seems to oversimplify a genre and culture that connects many influences. There’s no reason why we should consider Waka Flocka Flame, Childish Gambino, and Kendrick Lamar to be of the same genre when their content, style, and audience are completely different. By not classifying subgenres, we overlook the nuances that make their music great.

I believe that we should classify Hip-Hop by tags, not as one genre. Potential tags will include: “Remix,” “Southern,” “Freestyle,” and “Grunge.”

I think tags are better than subgenre distinctions since Hip-Hop culture is a recombination of existing sounds, ideas, and patterns. Tags will help us to identify music that incorporates many different aspects while making the music more searchable and accessible.

What do you think?

This weekend, the NBA All-Star Weekend returns to my hometown, Orlando, FL, for the first time since 1992. As a part of the celebration, Nike has designed and released the Galaxy All-Star Pack, a collection of shoes developed to commemorate Central Florida as the epicenter for space exploration and research (really, at NASA’s HQ in Cape Canaveral).

To keep the sneaker supply limited, Nike has decided to only release the shoes in Orlando, New York, and online at NikeTown.com. All of the supply will be released today, February 23rd, and they are expected to sell out very quickly.

At midnight (about 90 minutes ago), NikeTown.com released their inventory. At 12:05am when I entered my credit card information, I was notified that I was too late and each and every pair was sold out. I hope that the sneakers were purchased by true fans, or those who genuinely find them interesting, but I suspect that many were sold to collectors and re-sellers.

Sneaker culture is extremely fascinating to study. Like a well-developed network, people who tend to follow exclusive shoe releases are highly active and highly engaged in the discovery and consumption of new products. I understand the economic principle behind artificial scarcity (i.e. low supply = high demand), but I am unsure whether or not it is the right approach to this marketplace. While scarcity keeps the quality and price high, it prices out or limits the availability of the sneaker to many who are willing to buy it. Additionally, the scarcity tends to promote the emergence of a secondary market for exclusive sneakers that is priced as a function of the hype surrounding each shoe. [1]

As we consider new ways of connecting and interacting with others online, I hope that the exclusive sneaker marketplace becomes more efficient. I don’t know what this looks like yet, but it is something I’ve started to think about.

—

[1] To highlight how artificial scarcity affects price in the secondary market, the following charts visualize the price and sales volume of the Nike Air Yeezy, Kanye West’s first pair of shoes, over the last two years. It’s cray.