Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

Will You Be Reading This Post On An Amazon Kindle Someday?

The Amazon Kindle is another big company foray into the world of e-books.   Similar to the Sony Reader, Amazon is trying to capitalize on the belief that people are willing to forego the paper version of books and convert to an all digital solution.  There was a time when the publishing industry was extremely worried about their business model dissolving and were thinking about ways to offer digital solutions.  Even my company before business school, Aplia, incorporated digital versions of Economic textbooks into our product offerings.  However we didn’t see them as a full replacement for a physical textbook.  Rather, we treated the online version as a lower cost alternative for students. We certainly didn’t see digital books as transforming publishing as much as the major publishers did.  And as of now, the fear of people throwing away their paper based books have certainly not been realized.

There are several problems that people have generally had with reading text digitally - it’s usually the complaint of eye strain/fatigue, readability and the scannability of digital text, and portability. Amazon’s Kindle seems to have gotten rid of most of the common complaints of digital text.  It has a paper-like screen that acts and feels like you are reading a real book.  The screen is not backlit and actually uses real ink (just displays the ink particles electronically).  There are different font sizes for your reading preference and has an ergonomic design and shape that’s similar to holding a book.  Plus since it’s a stand alone reader that weighs only 10.3 pounds, you can bring it anywhere.  If you watch the video demonstration of the Kindle, it looks pretty impressive.  Definitely much better than I initially thought it would be.

The only issue right now I have with the Kindle is it’s price point.  The reader itself costs $399 with Kindle formatted books for $9.99 each.  Subscriptions to newspapers like the NY Times and The Wall Street Journal range from $9.99 to $14.99.  Magazines cost $2-3 an issue.

I think the price of the Kindle itself is prohibitive to the mass market and mass acceptance.  While early adopters will gobble up the Kindle (as evidenced by the fact it’s already on backorder), I think in the long run Amazon will need to take a “razor and blades “or “cell phone and service” model.  This means essentially giving the Kindle away with a large subsidy or as close to free as possible.  Where they will make their money is on the books, magazines, and newspapers that I presume they get a cut of due to Kindle’s proprietary format and specific networks. 

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Is Virtual News Newsworthy?

CNN annouced that they were going to have a presence within the virtual world of Second Life. This begs the question if this really makes sense or not.  The main premise is for Second Life “residents” to submit user generated content to CNN I-Report Hub in the virtual environment.  This content could be from the “real” world or what residents deem newsworthy within Second Life. While CNN aims to be one of the leaders in news and information delivery, I truly question whether anyone really cares about “virtual” news.  I understand that most companies today want to be on the cutting edge of Web 2.0 intiatives but I think that CNN is stretching a bit on their Second Life presence.  For the amount of money and resources they have probably invested, CNN will probably not get much out of this intiative.  In terms of branding, CNN is already highly recognizable in both the television/cable arena as well as on the Internet.  While their “virtual” presence might spur some initial interest and submissions, I think after a few months the novelty will disappear.  Most people gloss over real world news and the happenings around the globe, I doubt that virtual news will be any different.  Do you really think that people will care about a 10 car pile up on the virtual Second Life freeway or that a virtual sports team won last night?  I highly doubt it.

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Going Ga-Ga over Maka-Maka

Wow, on the same concept as the previous post, Is Facebook the Next Revolution of E-Mail, I came across this article about Google’s latest initiative called “Maka-Maka”.  Maka-Maka is a social network/matrix overlay over Google’s popular applications like Gmail and Google Maps.  Like Facebook, it looks like Google wants to incorporate more interactivity and interaction amongst the user and their network of friends.  I could instantly imagine recommendations of restaurants by friends on Google Maps, looking at personal profiles through your contact list on Gmail, or giving a status update to your network if you are editing a document on Google Docs. 

This will be quite interesting to see how Google develops “Maka-Maka” but the initial premise seems quite promising — making the web an even smaller and more interactive arena where better conversations can occur.

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