Video
Ezarik, then a 23-year-old Pittsburgh-area graphic designer, sketch comedian, and blogger, received her 300-page bill on Saturday, August 11, 2007, and decided to use it as a prop for a self-produced video shot in a coffee shop. She posted the edited one-minute clip to several popular Internet video hosting services by the following Monday. In the first week, the video received over 500,000 total views on YouTube, 350,000 views on Revver, 500,000 views on Break.com and 1,100,000 views on Yahoo Video, as self-reported by the four popular internet video sites as of August 22. Total views were reported to exceed 8 million by the end of 2007. Ezarik said she earned US$2000 from the video from Revver.
Portions of the video were also televised along with one-on-one interviews with Ezarik by several national and local news programs in the United States, including CNN, Fox News Channel, WTAE-TV, and WPXI-TV. ABC News Now also included independent reporting by an ABC News Radio reporter in their video interview.
Ezarik's internet video commentary focused on the unnecessary waste of paper billing. In the video she highlights the physical size of the bill, not the amount due. "I have an iPhone and I had to switch to AT&T. So, that's wonderful. Well, I got my first AT&T bill, right here in a box," she says at the start of the video. The rest of the video, set to the distinctive music used in American iPhone television commercials, shows her opening the box and flipping through the pages in fast motion. The clip ends with the on-screen caption, "Use e-billing. Save a forest."
Her other comments also followed along the same lines. In a blog posting, she wrote, "Apparently, they give you a detailed transaction of every text message sent and received. Completely unnecessary." She told the USA Today reporter, "This is so silly, there's no reason they need to send you this much information." Ezarik is a heavy user who typically sends and receives tens of thousands of text messages a month, which generated an exceptionally long bill – 300 double-sided pages that had to be sent in a box with postage charges of US$7. In media interviews, Ezarik was asked the amount due, and answered that her first bill was for US$275.
She had no complaints about the iPhone itself, saying, "I made the video only to point out the comical aspect of my phone bill being delivered in a box. As for the iPhone? I love it."
Read more about this topic: 300-page I Phone Bill
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