Josh Kim dot Org

The iPod Earbuds were never that great to begin with… but being a college student (poor, poor, and poor some more) and not an audiophile, I decided they were “good enough”. I was okay with them, as long as the little black covers that came with them stayed on it to provide some kind of friction so that the dang things would say in my ear (and would provide me with SOME bass…). However, since those pearly white earbuds seemed like they were designed for maximum slippage of the black covers, I’ve lost them… after years and years of properly caring of those little thingers. It’s been a couple months since that’s happened, and I’ve coped.

No longer.

Now, I’ve been forced to just jack up my volume (JK TO THE MAX!) to be able to even hear the music… I feel like when I do that, I:

• Waste battery
• Screw up my hearing more than I should when in an area with lots of ambient noise, and
• Let everyone else around in a 3 feet radius know what I’m listening to.

And that’s not something I want them to know… I like to enjoy my Korean Pop mostly alone, dancing and singing. Ahem

The Pre-Review

So I’ve been on the market for some nice earbuds. There are those that go all out for the Shure’s, but I don’t think paying more than $100 for a pair of earbuds… is going to fly with me. I was going for maybe ~$50 as the price range.

Randomly, I meet up with two friends who pointed me to CX300. Of course, word-of-mouth is so effective… I even got to see how they looked and felt like (didn’t put it into my ears… cuz… it’s the kind you stick deep into your ear canal… but I got the point), and get user reviews on the spot.

For some reason, I love reading personal reviews on people’s blogs or forums. They feel much more real to me than those reviews from mainstream review sites (even though those sites are actually pretty good at what they do). Like this one, which puts the CX300 head-to-head with the Sony (which I hear very bad things about… and I never like buying anything Sony, anyway… that… is yet another post…), makes me feel a lot better in putting my money in a pair of these lovely earbuds.

The Realization

Then it hit me. No longer am I dependent on TV or radio or print advertisements to tell me what I need to buy. Even more so, the way we research products is changing through the Internet.

I have a need for a product to fulfill a need in my life (listening to music). I have preferences in what features I want in that product (asymmetric cord length, middle-to-high-end quality product, ~$50). I want reviews from people, and not just any people… the people whose opinions I trust.

Identification of the product/service, search parameters, and peer reviews. It’s being done the world of Web 2.0.

And then I took another step back: The Internet is just filled with opportunities to leverage (it’s that word again… [hurl]) what people think of something, and to help others choose based on that information. So much growth is needed in this space… and I hope to fulfill that need with the next project. Or not… I might go a completely different route.

Closing

Like a good blogger who’s trying to monetize from his blog, I should go ahead and post the Amazon link to it, but it’s so cheap here. I highly suggest you wait until I get mine, though, because it does look kinda shady. Looks like it might be shipping from China… and it’s going to be taking a while to get here…