There’s obviously incentive to “Punk” the internet and get a slew of new traffic. Gizmodo’s been known to do some pretty skeezy things during their time to get traffic boosts, and this may or may not be one of those attempts. It’s pretty obvious that traffic has been dropping off pretty quickly over the last couple months (see compete.com graph below), so the time seems right for a “Prank.”
In February, according to Compete.com Gizmodo had 1.5 Million unique visitors, a decline by 9.04% over the previous 30 day span. Today, on news that the 4G iPhone that was “lost” and subsequently confirmed as being legit by Gizmodo, the site is currently raking in over 1 Million unique views today alone (According to the traffic count on their blog post).
Believe what you want about the leak, but it seems like others are a little skeptical. Apparently “Jonathan Ive” on twitter thinks it’s a joke as well. Notice that it’s not a confirmed account, though.
Also, here’s a question for you. A company like Apple, with its hordes of rabid lawyers, usually jumps all over leaked material. Wouldn’t they be sending out take down letters already? Heck, normally the post would have disappeared by now.
