This is the second article about a cupcake bubble I have read this week. A little fishy.

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I was about to post the same thing. The odds of two people simultaneously and independently coming up with an idea for an article about a bubble of cupcake stores has to be infinitesimal. Since Easterbrook's article came out earlier as part of a much larger article, I'm gonna assume it's his idea. Bad move by Gross... I guess he assumed ESPN and Slate's audiences didn't overlap.

This column has been in the works at least since Friday.

This column has been in the works at least since Friday.

That's probably because Gross read this one last Thursday:

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Note that the cupcake thing has been going on for long enough that Gross was able to make a number of references to existing cupcake businesses, organized to the point of having multiple outlets. I doubt that happened overnight.

Additionally, several of the anchors on CNBC had cupcakes on their desk and were discussing the phenomenon at least a week ago. I don't remember whether Gross was there for the discussion, but he does appear on CNBC (right-winger that he is) fairly often.

I have noticed also that several newspapers and TV channels simultaneously started reporting on the forest fire north of the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. Coincidence?

That would have been an amazingly bad assumption since TMQ got its start on Slate.

It isn't just that they wrote about over-priced and fancy cupcakes. It is that they (all three) referred to is as a "cupcake bubble". I'm thinking collusion - group joke.

After all, individual writers may have picked the subject but would have had different takes. Now for Moneybox, it would have been natural - though tongue-in-cheek - to talk about this as a bubble. And considering the economy, the humor is appreciated. But three "independent" articles with the same approach? Why woudn't one be complaining about the price, or how ludicrous it is to specialize in this one aspect of desert bakery since cake stores and other bakeries already exist. This on top of the fact that box mixes are cheap and easy to make, though not necessarily good.

If you don't want to call it the "cupcake bubble" what do you call it? The -bubble suffix fits just as well as the -gate suffix for it's situations.

Can you guys all relax a bit? Maybe you should all enjoy a nice, tasty cupcake. I hear they're all the rage these days.

I also found it striking that just a day after I got around to reading Easterbrook's TMQ aside about a cupcake bubble I find an article on the same topic in Slate. And I was just about to post about it when I noticed a link over on the right side of screen to a Newsweek article on the cupcake bubble. As it turns out, it was the same Daniel Gross article we all read here. On Newsweek it has a posted date of August 14th and an updated date of September 3rd. So perhaps Gross was first after all. Or perhaps they were both inspired by some other source. Or maybe they both hit upon it independently, like Newton and Liebnitz.

In any case, I liked both articles. Gross's has more analysis of the likely reasons why a cupcake bubble has developed and what may come next. Easterbrook's has more cheerleaders in swimsuits.

Now if Gross's column next Thursday features NFL predictions written in haiku, then I will become suspicious.

This is pretty interesting. I also immediately noticed the substantial overlap between the TMQ and Gross articles, although the Gross one is certainly much more in depth.

I'm thinking that, based on how it was written, TMQ wasn't really claiming he originated the idea. He was using the idea of a cupcake bubble as a lead-in to a different type of cupcake issue - that of college football teams scheduling "cupcake" matchups in order to pad their win totals. TMQ makes it a point to say things like "TMQ has always said ...", but he doesn't say it for the cupcake bubble idea. I think this gives an inference against plagiarism, although I'm not sure of its strength.

I must admit I was impressed by the article. I found myself nodding my head as he discussed the marketplace evolution (and ultimate de-evolution) of highly-vertical "pop" entrepreural ventures (yogurt shops, tea shops, cupcake shops, dog-walking businesses) like these.

I watch - in the wake of our horrible macro-economy - the popping up of vertically-niched businesses and wonder about their long-term survival.

It was interesting to find someone to put the evolution of these businesses into a context.

My hats off to someone who can write a story about the proliferation of niche businesses, the manner in which the market evolves to further split the pie, and how - at the end of the day - the consumer loses interest in the product.

Burn bright. Burn out.

Thanks,

Call me Beeper 812

Hey - it was a good article and insightful...if nobody was ever allowed to write something after it had been discussed elsewhere then Farhad Manjoo would be out of a job! :)

Yup.

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Easterbrook for ESPN.

That seems to have been...um...covered.

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