August 2008 Archives - 2/11

Why Shelfari is the least important move Amazon has made

August 26, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

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?

Buffer

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: abebooks, amazon, Business, business strategy, diversifying, kindle, librarything, purchase, safeguard, seea kindle in your city, shelfari, universal wish list, user interface

Tweet of the Week: #4

August 26, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Simply perfect, and coming from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (@biz).

Funnily enough, our first Tweet of the Week was from fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams!

Special earthquake edition Tweet of the Week.

Tweet of the Week: 3

Tweet of the Week: 2

Tweet of the Week :1

Buffer

Filed Under: Tweet of the Week Tagged With: @biz, biz stone, co-founder, tweet of the week, twitter

Where are online trading standards?

August 25, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Trading Standards is a UK institution which aims to enforce consumer protection with information, settling dispuates and issuing fines…

The reason they’ve come to mind is that my Twitter account contains the word ‘marketing’, so I appear to have attracted an inordinate amount of followers who claim to be internet marketing experts, mavens, network marketers and other such terms proclaiming their expertise.

The strange thing is that they appear to have misunderstood Twitter, and have decided to follow way more people than are following them.

And their linked webpage is normally a single page proclaiming their expertise and offering the chance to learn more by paying a small sum. A quick check reveals their page has a Google Page Rank of 0.

Now, I’m in no way an internet marketing expert, but I do think it’s slightly suspicious that someone who is able to teach you a way to be hugely successful and make large sums of money on the internet hasn’t found out how to give their page any authority, or use Twitter in the right way…

Hopefully most people who read my blog share my cynicism, but if not, do make sure you check easily accessible background evidence like Google PR, or Technorati rank etc before parting with cash for anyone who claims to know about marketing!

Almost everyone who I’ve had the pleasure of learning from will happily share for free via their blogs or websites in order to build up their real world authority to lead to opportunities of future employment – not try and sell you an ebook or dvd set. And those that do offer tuition tend to also back this up by sharing a lot of information for free, and having a website which has a legitimately large following, for instance, Problogger. (Note: Real experts are always honest about constantly learning more)

To save some time, here’s the real secret behind huge financial reward from internet success:

1. Have a really good idea.

2. Work really, really, really, really hard to make it a success.

3. Have a bit of luck.

4. If it still doesn’t work, have another good idea and go back to Step 1.

After 10 years of running websites, including for one of the biggest magazine publishers in the UK, I’ve yet to see anything which defies those rules and isn’t a scam in some way!

Buffer

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketing, get rich quick, internet marketing experts, marketing, marketing maven, network marketing

Does Blip.fm show a route to monetisation for Twitter?

August 25, 2008 By Dan Thornton 4 Comments

It took me a couple of passes to get the value of Blip.fm as opposed to existing streaming radio online like last.fm. At first, for some reason, it wasn’t running properly and playing each track in turn for me, which didn’t help! But now it’s becoming a great way to discover new music recommended by my friends, even if I normally revert to streaming my last.fm library for longer periods. The two compliment each other is the same way as someone like John Peel complimented by record collection, but I couldn’t always make it through an entire show before some obscure German techno forced me to change radio station.

Blip.fm helps me find new music by effectively allowing users to Twitter with each song they choose, giving it some context, or publicly proclaiming their love for it etc. And I can aggregate these choices into my own list, give ‘props’ to other users for good choices, and filter the overall stream via my friends, just as I would with Twitter.

Where it might give a clue to revenue streams for microblogging is in offering the direct link to buy any track as an MP3 via Amazon. So if I like a particular track or artist, the opportunity to make a quick impulse purchase is always there – and it’s backed up by allowing me to listen to the track based on recommendations by my friends.

The only weakness is that not every track is available, and I need to be aware that I want to listen to this track offline, in my car, on an Ipod, at the time that I’m experiencing it…or be able to find it easily, and at the moment there’s no way to search my Playlist, or add individual songs to my Amazon wishlist.

But if what if this model was more widely applied – to offline magazines and books for example. And to products as well? One Twitter Affiliates scheme which wasn’t tied into a sole retailer, but operated as an aggregation service to allow me to recommend almost anything, and offer a direct link?

It’s probably the quickest and simplest method of monetising the Twitterati. And people can be persuaded to link their recommendations to returns for themselves or even for charity, as something like Squidoo shows.

It would be possible to test the theory if individuals listed book recommendations etc via existing Amazon etc affiliate accounts, but this may lead to confusion and disappointment if it isn’t flagged up as such before an unsuspecting user follows the link – but Twitter and the extra 20 characters could flag referral posts quickly and uniformly.

The only question for me is who tries it first – Twitter, or an enterprising external team? Anyone know a good developer?