TheWayoftheWeb

While the chaps over at Friendfeed might be proposing we augment RSS with Simple Update Protocol, there’s  a slightly more basic (from my side) bit of syndicated going on, which I’m calling ‘SRSBS’ (Someone Really Simple Being Syndicated).

What this means is that I’m now one of the bloggers being syndicated onto the Socially Minded group blog. And interestingly, the idea is to group together all of the social media/technology types in the charming county of Cambridgeshire - tying together similar ideas, but also forming a loose collective to be able to meet in real life and share ideas.

Aside from myself, there’s also Matthew Brazil of 6Consulting, my Bauer Media colleague David Cushman, Alan Moore of Communities Dominate Brands fame, and Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets. Plus two resident bloggers outside of Cambridgeshire, Gennefer Snowfield, and  Ian Hendry.

More Cambridgeshire people are welcome - and in fact it’s already led me to discover one of the contacts I keep meaning to meet in London actually commutes from within about 15 miles of my house! Matthew Brazil is coordinating everything, so he’s your man to be added.

I think I’m the only person on the list special enough to have two blogs on the list - this place, and 140char.com. I just hope people don’t stop coming to visit my natural environment and contributing to the millions * I earn from Adsense

*millions may be a lie to portray myself as a rich, successful make money blogger. I may, in fact, not actually make very much at all. But that’s not really the point of this blog…

When I was a child and teenager, I was as obsessive about music as it was possible to be. I combined aspirations of becoming a professional musician and DJ, with the compulsive behaviour of a serial librarian and collector. So you can imagine how many music magazines (NME, Melody Maker, Metal Hammer, Kerrang, Record Collector, Mojo, Q etc), and how many records and eventually CDs I consumed - just to make it clear I’m not completely over the hill, CDs came into circulation when I was about 11 or 12 I think…

And just as my interest in videogames and comics have both waned during early adulthood and resurfaced now due to meeting likeminded people online, my interest in music has seen a healthy resurgence. In the meantime, I still listened to all my old purchases, but I rarely found anything new. That’s changed a lot thanks to the internet.

There are basically three sites I use for all my music needs (although for the moment I still only have a radio in my car!)

• Blip.fm - There’s been a lot of buzz around Blip recently. In fact, I even suggested it shows the best method of monetising Twitter, as it’s essentially a cross between a microblog, and an annotated John Peel show. You simply tell people what you’re listening to, and if it’s available on the site they can listen as well - and that’s all filtered by who you follow, with the option to buy MP3s if you like something enough.  It’s perfect for a quick blast to find songs I’d have never heard about, or listened to, unless it was recommended by a trusted source.
• Last.fm - It’s essentially the only real option at the moment if you’re outside of the U.S. We can’t access Pandora (but founder Tim Westergren has stated it’s close to closing anyway), and Meemix seems to have focussed on extras rather than a reliable player.
• Myspace - Yep, it’s hard to believe in the age of Facebook dominance, and open source Muxtapes, but if I hear a bands name, and I want to hear their songs really quickly and easily, I tend to end up going to Myspace even before last.fm - mainly down to speed. It’ll be interesting to see if that means I use it more when the Myspace streaming radio finally appears. It might replace last.fm, but only if it offers a stream of my favourite choices without a need to subscribe

And that’s about it for music. I very occasionally catch a music show on TV (I’ve been looking at 4Music as it’s co-owned by Bauer Media where I work, along with Kerrang). I hear the radio for about 10 minutes in the car (and that’s only until I replace the stereo so I can listen to podcasts), and my only real radio use is to listen to live football if I can’t watch it. Three online services, and the recommendations I receive have replaced pretty much all my other musical inputs.

And incidentally, all my latest CD and MP3 purchases have all been songs that I would never have heard on the radio, were all things I generally struggled to find in most music shops, and once again persuaded me how much easier it is to find music online.

I’ve been a fan of the ‘cartoons on the back of business cards’ work of Hugh MacLeod for a long time, often using the examples of his work and blog to try and inspire other people.

He was soon joined at some unspecified point by David Armano’s ‘visual thinking’ on Logic + Emotion, whose genius has livened up many of my presentations with slides that sum up social media in eloquent visuals.

But somehow I’d missed out on Tom Fishburne until I caught 10 questions with him on Church of the Consumer yesterday. I then spent longer than intended taking a look at a huge range of great marketing related cartoons at www.tomfishburne.com. My discovery ties into his Virtual Post2Post book tour to promote his latest work, This One Time, At Brand Camp.

Personally, I think his next move should be poster version I could hang around the office (Please forgive the dodgy resizing for my central blog column, and click to see the original in context):

So Amazon has bought Shelfari. The interesting thing for me isn’t Shelfari’s innovative User Interface, but the business strategy that led to the purchase by Amazon. It’s a strategy that has also included buying AbeBooks, a marketplace for used and rare books. Which happens to own 40% of Shelfari competitor LibraryThing! Promotion of the Kindle may see a plan to target students, and the continuation of the ‘See a Kindle in Your City‘ scheme.

And then there’s the launch of the new Amazon Universal Wish List (In the U.S. at least - I couldn’t get a UK date out of Amazon). And all of this is in the face of the credit crunch, recession, and all the other harbringers of doom for most business. So the startegy appears to be one advocated by many marketing people in continuing to spend and even expand during the harder times to make the most of them - and then to benefit in the next upturn. The people using Abebook for rare books probably won’t be hit as much as the general public by a recession - luxury items always continue to do well. ‘See a Kindle’ costs nothing - it asks Kindle fans to demonstrate the product to other people for the fun of it. Universal Wish List shows a good move to diversify and get value from outside Amazonville. The only strange choice is Shelfari in some ways.

I’m not a huge Shelfari fan, as my other hobbies and commitments mean that I don’t read as much as I once did (although I’m currently motoring through a re-read of Mr Nice, the autobiography of Welsh drug-smuggling legend Howard Marks). I did play around for a while (and here’s the proof), but although I joined a few groups and listed some of my favourites, I never really found much discussion about the titles I enjoyed. And the wish list function was less use to anyone wanting to buy me a gift than the Amazon counterpart. It’s growing, but not hugely (I’ve compared it to Librarything, and also to Virb, which is another niche site with nice UI)

If it wasn’t for the book focus, Shelfari wouldn’t have been bought - so what does it add to Amazon?

Well, it does add a hardcore devoted group who will have intelligent comments about the books they’ve read - rather than ‘reviews’ of products three months before they’re released - and advertisers are targeting core groups.

Or closer integration could see Shelfari used as a safeguard if mainstream consumers aren’t engaging with Amazon during the downturn - the hardcore will continue to spend. Although a recent emarketer report claimed U.S. shoppers were saving money by shopping more online.

In which case, how does Shelfari make sense as a purchase rather than a partnership, or offering it, and it’s competitors, better User Interface?

Any ideas?