Came across this blog post that nicely describes the danger of building up too much hype.

Nokia build up so much hype about its N97 before it was launched that media and blogosphere was abuzz with speculations. Then it was released and…..duh! nothing new there!

Here’s an excerpt:

Everyone was guessing about Nokia’s big announcement. All the heavyweight blog sites were weighing in with speculation. Some of the blogging elite even flew all the way to Barcelona for Nokia week just to find out what it was — but even they were sworn to secrecy….

…if you get everyone hyped about a launch (they had a massive countdown clock that countless sites had embedded in posts) is that you better have something spectacular to show when the time comes. Apple are masters of this tactic, but could Nokia pull the sme lever?

Umm, this is Nokia we’re talking about, remember. This is the company that is in a death spiral, shedding market share faster these days than Wall Street sheds investment bankers.

So at the appointed hour, Nokia unveiled the most underwhelming phone of the year:

The N97. It’s got a 16:9 screen, a slide out qwerty keyboard, a great camera, gps, accelerometer, 64Gb of memory, etc.

Whoop-ti-doo. We’ve seen all these things on so many other phones this year.

Talk about being late to the party!

Even the interface looks like they stole the “panels” concept from the Sony-Ericsson X1. And the “tactile touch screen” looks like a BlackBerry Storm ripoff.

Lesson we can learn:
If you must build up hype about your latest product. the reality of your product better live up to the heightened expectations, if not it is going to be received so poorly by the consumers are just going to react extremely negative to whatever good there is in your product.