Call me simple because it’s the smallest things in life that make me happy. I was so excited last year when we finally located and planted a pineapple guava tree (compliments of Jackie Caswell, brilliant gardener at Frog Hollow and our CEO’s wife) in our front yard (a small patch of land) – but after this past week’s news that Larry Ellison purchased 98% of an 18-mile pineapple-filled island – I guess everything in life is relative. In a different lifetime over 20 years ago, I used to work at Oracle and can remember the endless parade of Larry’s new cars, boats and airplanes…but he’s really outdone himself this time. I guess the bigger the income, the bigger the toys, and Lanai sounds like a pretty sweet playground. With the news of Larry’s $600 million acquisition, the social media world certainly had something to say – Wikipedia updated the Lanai page in record time and the June 23rd installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker powered by NetBase examined the Facebook and Twitter response. 48% couldn’t help but make comparisons to Larry’s fellow billionaires, 37% thought the whole thing was tacky, while 8% found it cool and 7% made light of the situation. I was tongue-in-cheek too – check out some more of the jokes below, as well as a side-by-side comparison of my take on a pineapple investment…and Larry’s take.
Phase 2: Larry Ellison will begin breeding pineapple-eating dinosaurs.
Pineapple guava patch/pineapple Island – it’s all relative!
Lisa Joy Rosner
The Brand Passion Index, other cool ConsumerBase insights, and thoughts on understanding the social media universe from Lisa Joy Rosner, NetBase CMO.
