This blog post from Brad Berens is really making my head spin. I could simply think of it as an interesting idea and leave it at that. But dear reader, you know me. Reckless overthink c'est moi. And what is turning in my head is...is helping a competitor out and giving them their due a new reality of competing in the digital age? Is this how itz done nowadays?
I come from the ole skool of if your competitor is drowning throw him an anvil. But this over the top idea and Brad posting it may be one of those seminal tipping points in evolution of the way brands compete in our times.
Or it might just be a cool little idea. You make the call.
Looks like the economy has another casualty: Amazon no longer accepts Bill Me Later, the company that offers instant credit to online consumers. The BML model does an instant credit check before offering consumers the option to get a service or product now, and pay later. The service makes money on fees and on interest charges for consumers who choose to pay on time, as with a credit card.
Problem is, in the current credit crunch, far fewer people are actualy eligible for credit, meaning that the profitability of this business has dropped. So much so that Amazon, its owner, no longer offers Bill Me Later as a payment option. Huh?
Ah, the joy of the "free market," brought to us in large part by Saint Phil Gramm.
Bull Me Later weren't cheap, neither. As I recall, Amazon dropped $800 Mil on this acquisition -- yep, a service they no longer have the confidence to accept.
Apparently the diva of spirit lurves the Kindle tremendously, and Amazon has responded to that love by offering those who type in the OPRAHWINFREY coupon code a $50 discount! This according to a Financial Times article that postulates that this could be the American Idol moment for e-readers.
American Idol moment, you ask? What I mean is to draw a connection between this and how SMS voting fueled the mainstreaming of texting in the US.
An endorsement by the Big O has made millionaires of more than a few entrants in the book world. So there ya go!
The Boy Genius Report blog has a number of photos of the new Kindle. Check them out here. From what I can see, the 2.0 version is a significant upgrade in that the keyboard looks better, and gone are the long "next page" "prev page" side bars and Praise the Lord Besos for that!
It's bigger, which I'd have to hold to determine whether that is a good thing or not. What's making it larger is that keyboard -- you'll recall that on this blog earlier this week I showed a picture of the Sony Touch Screen, which is decidedly smaller.
I like my Kindle. A lot. But the keyboard is nothing short of horrid. It is reminiscent of Commodore 64. I'd imagine that the upcoming Kindle 2.0 will offer a major improvement.
But Sony's upping its game with its new eReader, now on sale in parts of Europe, and a-comin' to the US ASAP.
Sony readers didn't set the world on fire, but did OK. And one of the problems they see, according to this article on Ars Technica, was that people don't like the IDEA of ereaders very much, but tend to like them when they get hands on experience. Ars Technica reports:
To overcome this, Sony's trained 1,000 people that will be set loose in some of the 3,000 retail outlets that carry the Reader in an effort to expose more of the public to it. The company is also launching a program that will see it donate Readers and eBooks to schools.
...
The key feature is its touch-sensitive screen, which allows users to manipulate the device with either the included stylus or a finger. Reader users can now directly select text, type on an onscreen keyboard, and page through content with gestures, swiping pages to turn them or shuffling rapidly through a book with a swipe-and-hold gesture. The E Ink screen seemed more responsive than the Kindle's, which makes the responses to gestures seem fairly direct. The onscreen typing, however, still feels a bit sluggish.
John Timmer of Ars Technica later stated:
In my brief hands-on time with it, the Reader's hardware seemed superior to the Kindle in nearly every way, but it still lacks some of the Kindle's killer features: brand recognition, a huge content library, and always-on wireless. Haber made it clear that all of these are in the works. Sony plans to have 100,000 titles available by the holidays (although that's still just about half the Kindle's content) and its trained sales teams should be in the stores by then. Wireless will come, too, but Haber said, "it needs to be on an open foundation" before Sony will release it.
I think the crux of the challenge for Sony is in their brand versus Amazon. Sony=electronics, Amazon=books. And a prospective ebook buyer wants assurance that a reader will offer a good bookish experience.
But that doesn't mean I won't be looking it over...
Were earlier estimates of Kindle sales a bunch of unfounded hype? Silicon Valley Insider is reporting that Amazon spokespeople are...distancing themselves from the high estimates that leading bloggers (and me) reported a couple of weeks ago. Here's an excerpt from a Seattle Post Intelligencer story they cited in their story:
Amazon officials gave McAdams Wright Ragen analysts the impression that high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable.
Amazon managers "told us that the Kindle is definitely selling very well, but they also said the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates 'did not run them by company,'" Bueneman wrote.
To my knowledge, Amazon has NEVER released sales figures for the device. Why that is is anyone's guess. As a public company it is unlikely that they would consciously leak such info -- the initiative is important enough that IF they release the data, they need to do so publicly and openly.
Amazon has purchased Shelfari, the smallish social network built around books. The two companies have always had a financial relationship -- Amazon after all was an early Shelfari investor.
The book-centered social media business has been growing at a healthy clip, and this acquisition seems to signal that Amazon has no desire whatsoever to be anywhere but at the center of any relationship anyone has with books.
ReadWriteWeb noted the innovative UI in this post, which is a clear advantage over the larger but rather spartan LibraryThing. Now, don't get me wrong, I am a LibraryThing user, have been for well over a year, and I am satisfied with it in its current form. That being said, I will be the first to note that LibraryThing's appearance is a bit...unzippy. Given the size advantage LT has over Shelfari, however, it is apparent that LibraryThing's more featured experience is preferred by many bookies.
eBay has changed its revenue model to one that favors more of its fixed price "buy it now" sellers versus auctioners, all this in time for the big Christmas push.
What's that you say...an eBay without auctions? Well, no, but eBay is reporting that more than half of its current business is now from fixed price sales -- and that's where the growth is. It appears as if there are a number of forces that are leading their buyers away from the auction concept. My hypotheses:
1. With fixed price, you can be certain you are getting an item. 2. Auctions are favored by small sellers whereas volume retailers like fixed price -- and big retailers are eBay's future. 3. Auctions take too long. We live in a society that values instant gratification. 4. People are becoming bored with the concept of bidding.
I should point out that many long time eBay sellers -- who, as a group tend NOT to be giant retailers, are dissatisfied with eBay's restructuring of its fee scheme. But as the only real auction game in town. eBay can probably safely do this without losing these thousands of vendors.
I cannot help but wonder however what this will do to the eBay equity. eBay has never been Amazon, and while that may be where they are headed -- in particular copying Amazon's Z Seller model, it'll be interesting to see how their loyal buyers deal with this change as well.
What IS clear is that with auctions trending down as a percent of their business, eBay had to do SOMETHING.
I was one of the first people to order a Kindle -- well, one of the first-ish. It was very logical for a person like me that reads several books a week. Overall I've liked the device as a portable library holder -- it will NOT replace books for me but it has been invaluable in my frequent travels. It's just that the paper book is just so darned good as a reading format!
Hermits who don't know about the device should know it's Amazon's book reader, which comes with lifetime wireless access as part of the package. And it's this bit that we'll be tangentially talking about here.
Kindle has fans and foes, and of course the requisite online parodies. (This is a bit off color, that's your warning.
Recently I was on a walk with my dear friend Susan MacDermid, who informed me that there is a subculture of Kindle Hackers who are making the device do and be more than Amazon intended. With free wireless it is only natural that many have tried to make it into a minicomputer. Also, apparently GPS capabilities can be unlocked. and the DRM that makes it take only books bought on the 'zon? Apparently it ain't hard to subvert, though any task that requires soldering is probably beyond my scope.
Well, I found this page that tells you some of the things that Kindle can be made to do. Read it if you have a Kindle and even if you don't as it tells you a lot about the minds of the people who have in their DNA the desire to tinker. I love that inventive spirit, and Igor Kochinsky clearly has it in spades hearts clubs and diamonds.
If Igor et al can find a way to do PowerPoint on it I will dance a jig.
