Gawker
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e-book wars
Simon & Schuster Sticks It to Amazon, Partners With Scribd
Simon & Schuster will announce today that it's struck a deal with Scribd.com to make around 5000 digital titles available for sale on the site, a move that sends a clear "screw you" message to Amazon and their little Kindle. More »
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Comment by smithhimself: Long range, I'd short the stock. Amazon's immense greediness is going to bring them down. 3 Responses | Other threads
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science
Jeff Bezos Wants Your Baby's Brains
What will Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos do next, after launching his grand Kindle swindle on the newspapers? He's aiming to get inside your offspring's heads! More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Mutley: I really can't tell if Bezos is giving or receiving in that photo. 2 Responses | Other threads
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print is dead
A Bigger Kindle Makes Jeff Bezos Richer and Newspapers Poorer
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle DX, a large-screen e-reader, today at the site of the New York Times's former headquarters in Lower Manhattan. The message: He's the future and newspapers are the past. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by stanhalen: But can you use this contraption as a blanket when you're sleeping on a park bench? The broadsheet is the classic... 2 Responses | Other threads
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print is dead
Why the Large-Format Kindle Is Not a Life Raft for Newspapers
Terminal patients often suffer colorful delusions. But none is as cruel as the fantasy Amazon.com has kindled among dying ink-stained wretches, who believe a magical electronic reading device will cure what ails magazines and newspapers. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Peter Feld: And extra points for saying "the old" rather than "the olds." 3 Responses | Other threads
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flackery
Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books
After gay-themed titles disappeared from Amazon.com's search results this weekend, everyone looked for someone to blame. One hacker took credit. Some faulted an Amazon engineer in France. One source thinks it was the Conficker worm.
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By Owen ThomasComment by cdmunch: I think it's adorable that all you butt pirates and twitterers still read books. 14 Responses | Other threads
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censorship
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage
Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by DrEngine: First, I untied and tied my laces an even amount of times, before flipple-bashing the revert to the Gung-ho.Then I... 9 Responses | Other threads
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flackery
Why Amazon Can't Just Call Gay Blacklist a 'Glitch'
(UPDATED) After stripping sales rankings from a variety of gay-themed books, from romance novels to histories, Amazon.com now blames "a glitch" for the changes and promises a fix. Good luck selling that line. More »
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By Ryan TateComment by allyzay: you know, it's theoretically possible that someone hit the wrong button accidentally/on-purpose and just filtered out everything with keyword "gay"... 9 Responses | Other threads
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books
These Books Too Gay for Amazon
(UPDATED) As if it wasn't hellacious enough working customer support for Amazon.com on Easter, the online book store's reps must now explain why gay romances (and other books) are too "adult" to rank. More » -
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recessionomics
Amazon Closes Warehouses, Doesn't Mind a Little Shrinkage
Amazon.com just closed warehouses for the first time since 2006, including one open just 18 months. No wonder: Penny-pinching consumers don't mind waiting a few extra days for their stuff. And CEO Jeff Bezos would no doubt prefer those in a hurry buy high-margin Kindle downloads. More » -
armchair general
Why Amazon.com Should Buy Digg
Digg needs to sell itself. Kevin Rose's headline-voting site is drowning; the more popular it gets, the more red ink it generates. But who needs a bunch of news stories rated? Here's an idea: Amazon.com. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ClockOnTheStove: Amazon's reviews can be wickedly entertaining as well. Case in point, Looking For - Best of David Hasselhoff: [www.amazon.com]... 1 Responses | Other threads
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copyfight
Wacky Discovery Founder Sues Amazon.com over Kindle
Discovery Communications, the owner of cable channels like FitTV and Animal Planet, is suing Amazon.com, maker of the Kindle, over an electronic-books patent taken out by its founder and CEO, John Hendricks, years ago. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by braak: Don't you actually have to have a blueprint of something before you can patent it? Like, I can't just... 3 Responses | Other threads
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e-books
Esquire Editor Admires the Kindle, or At Least the Hearst Replacement
Esquire editor David Granger loves the Amazon Kindle. Sort of. The e-book reader gives him hope that Internet-shortened attention spans will lengthen enough to spark a renaissance in books and magazines. He's utterly delusional. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by stoprobbers: I can't read off a screen, hurt my eyes. When society turns away from the written word -- on a PAGE... 2 Responses | Other threads
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e-books
Hearst's E-Reader: The Last Stand of a Doomed Industry
Dear media companies: Please stop trying to innovate. You're lousy at it. Hearst's supposed "Kindle killer," an electronic reader for magazines, is just the latest in a series of debacles from the moribund print-media business. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Argy: It's pretty hard to feature reader comments posted online when no one posts any. There's only so much citizens of... 2 Responses | Other threads
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jeff bezos
The Revenge of Amazon.com's 'Chuckling Maniac'
Jeff Bezos turned up on the Daily Show couch to promote Amazon.com's newest Kindle e-book reader. And as this clip shows, he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Why wouldn't he? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Schmalerie: I had heard about Kindle before, but never really made an effort to learn about it. After watching this... 5 Responses | Other threads
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Terry Drayton
Little League Thief Rewarded with Magazine Cover
What happened to Terry Drayton, the tech CEO whose company allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from kids' sports clubs? Why, he's Seattle Business's new cover boy.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Hydroceph: Yeah! Media whitewashing! The Atlantic's playing, too: [www.theatlantic.com] Here's the Atlantic by-line: Henry Blodget is the editor of Silicon Alley Insider, an online... 3 Responses | Other threads
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naughty
Amazon.com's holiday sweatshop horror
Freshly laid off? Things could be worse — like, for example, if you were working as a temporary employee at an Amazon warehouse.
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By Owen ThomasComment by 18thCFox: I lived in England for a year (and not in London or Oxbridge with a lot of other Yanks) and... 2 Responses | Other threads
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stocks
Why founders win
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like to talk about their hopes of "changing the world." Yes, of course: Changing the world from one in which they are poor to one in which they are fabulously wealthy. The question in the air is whether the founders of companies do a better job at creating wealth, for themselves and their investors, than professional managers. With Yahoo announcing Jerry Yang's plans to step down as CEO, it would seem like a losing time for founders. But Yang is an exceptional case; he took his hands off the steering wheel when Yahoo had a mere five employees, and never really ran anything until he stepped in as CEO last June. Most founders of successful startups eagerly seize power, and have to be forcibly dislodged from the driver's seat. The best never let go. Just take a long-term look at the stock market, and you'll see why. More » -
bill me later
Why isn't Amazon.com talking about its $150 million windfall?
Amazon.com got a big payday when eBay bought Bill Me Later, the payment service, for $945 million earlier this month. So why isn't it admitting it? In an SEC filing, Amazon.com didn't name Bill Me Later as the source of a $150 million cash payment it will receive in return for an investment. But it's obviously Bill Me Later, which Amazon.com invested in last December. Here's the curiously vague wording of Amazon's disclosure to shareholders, and three possible reasons for it. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by SheridanCotys: I heard that the lst round was valued at a 1bbl so Amazon lost $$$ . more » | Other threads
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earnings
Amazon.com predicts bleak Christmas
In its third-quarter earnings call, Amazon.com executives say they expect sales between $6 billion and $7 billion for the December quarter. A consensus of Wall Street analysts had predicted $7.05 billion. The stock is down 14 percent. [Silicon Alley Insider] -
acquisitions
Rackspace gobbles tiny competition to take on Amazon.com
Web hosting? So 1990s. Rackspace is now into "cloud computing." The company has acquired Slicehost, a small but popular virtual private server host, and JungleDisk, an online-storage startup. The deals comes as Rackspace is pushing its Mosso service as an alternative to Amazon.com's computing-power rental offerings. The question is now this, will Rackspace bring their world-class downtime to both services?
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Comment by Electrosphere: Slicehost is a bit of a web 2.0 darling because of their low BS attitude, both in support and their... more » | Other threads
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layoffs
Wikia lays off 10 percent of staff
Bid goodnight to Jimmy Wales's dream of cashing out on Wikipedia, the world's largest collection of infrequently asked questions. The vehicle for his scheme, a derivative for-profit startup called Wikia, is imploding. A tipster tells us that the 43-person company has laid off 30 percent of its staff. (Update: The company now says it has only laid off 10 percent of its employees.) Wikia lets users build their own anyone-can-edit wiki pages. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia sometimes runs advertising on the wikis; its most popular sites have to do with videogames. So why the layoffs? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by OletheaCadosneep: Didn't Wikia spin up just 2 or so years ago, not 1999....? 5 Responses | Other threads
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earnings
Amazon.com sales bogged by Wall Street's black hole
"Nearly half of consumers are delaying purchases due to uncertainty in the economy, while 42 percent are planning to decrease their usage of credit cards," Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian wrote this morning. Don't make too much of it yet: Lazard's lowered Amazon.com earnings estimates only a sliver, from $1.58 to $1.55 per share for 2008. Annual revenue for 2009, likewise, is lowered only a quarter-billion from $24.75 billion to $24.50 billion. That's 250 million bucks to you and me, but not much to Bezos and company. (Photo by AP/Ted S. Warren) -
digital music
MySpace Music — like Muxtape, except people who wear deodorant will use it
MySpace Music, a joint venture between the News Corp. social network and music labels Universal, Sony and Warner,finally launches next week, says Fortune, though it still won't have a CEO. MySpace users will be able to listen to and organize playlists full of songs from all three music labels for free. (EMI is the lone holdout, which means no coldplay.) Playlists will include affiliate links to Amazon.com's MP3 store. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says ad revenues and song kickbacks are going to save the music industry, replacing lost CD sales. More »
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Comment by socialmediamojo: Funny how the imeem reference got cut off there.... I'm pretty much expecting myspace music to be a clone of imeem... more » | Other threads
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online advertising
Amazon.com follows Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to Madison Avenue
Google's the undisputed king of Silicon Valley — but it's been wooing New York ad agencies nonstop, trying to break into the traditional part of the business, with mixed success. It's almost cute how all of its online rivals are following it. Amazon.com has hired a Microsoft ad sales exec, Lisa Utzschneider, as SVP of national ad sales. What, you thought Amazon sold books, not ads? Exactly the problem Utzschneider's being asked to solve: Amazon has been trying to sell ads for a long time, but they remain a small fraction of the retailer's revenue. A Madison Avenue agency executive tells us her hire is just the latest part in a methodical campaign by Jeff Bezos & Co. to beef up of its New York ad sales staff over the last four months. More » -
amazon.com
Gurbaksh Chahal's ego-book "The Dream" available for pre-order now
Gurbaksh Chahal, the guy who sold ad network Blue Lithium to Yahoo for $300 million and will pretend to be poor on Fox's The Secret Millionaire this fall, has written — more likely, paid somebody to write — a book which you can preorder on Amazon.com right now. This very minute. We're very much interested in a review copy, but a skeptical reporter friend of mine tells me he isn't. How come? More » -
booze
Amazon.com to let you pretend you understand wine from your own home
By the end of September, Amazon.com will begin selling wine, the director of Napa Valley Vintners told the Wall Street Journal. Online wine stores are possible now in part because of a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that knocked down New York and Michigan laws prohibiting it. Hooray legislating from the bench! More »
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Comment by bugz321: Legislating from the bench? Wow - right-wing propaganda is even showing up here. For those of you who also failed... 2 Responses | Other threads
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online video
Amazon.com's video on demand more "piddling" than "streaming"
While Amazon.com makes no claims as to the quality of video from its new "video on demand" online streaming service being comparable to DVD quality, a measly 1.2 megabit-per-second data rate is still laughable. To put it in perspective, standard-definition DVDs typically run well over 6Mbps (Apple, also risibly, calls the 5Mbps offerings from iTunes "HD," purely based on pixel dimensions and not data depth). And based on your connection speed, Amazon might deliver even less digital resolution. All of this for up to $14.99 to "own" a movie stored wrapped in Adobe's Flash copy protection. Granted, Amazon is hindered by the slow broadband connections typical in American households, but keeping the bitrate low also keeps bandwidth costs down — and margins high.
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By Jackson WestComment by Shadowlayer: Am I the only one seeing a big fat "UR DOIN IT RONG" with the pricing on amazon's service? more » | Other threads
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the sum of all human knowledge
Jimmy Wales and the art of the modern breakup
Another failed relationship, another awkward online parting of ways for Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Just a few months ago, he was squiring new-agey PR impresario Andrea Weckerle, a self-described "global nomad," around the world. Now, insiders say, Weckerle has dumped Wales — you can tell, because she no longer follows his Twitter updates. The puzzle here: How does he put so much energy into chasing women when he's supposedly leading the world's largest collection of unfactchecked assertions backed up by hyperlinks, and taking on Google with Wikia, his for-profit offshoot? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by colonelpanic: I think the whole Jimmy Wales vibe is blowing over, folks. There are only so many times I can read 500... 3 Responses | Other threads
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online video
Amazon.com puts Unbox away
We suspect the name "Unbox" only ever made sense to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. The online retailer has rebranded its video-download store as "Video on Demand." The only other big change: The videos will now play on Macs. They'll continue to be downloadable to viewers' TiVos, Windows Media Centers, and Xbox consoles. Flicks cost $2.99 to $3.99 to rent and $7.99 to $14.99 to buy. Another draw: Unlike Apple's iTunes store, you can get NBC Universal content from Amazon.com. (NBC vanished from Apple's store after a tiff over pricing last year.)
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Comment by UilliamLazred: I think the biggest change is that the videos you buy immediately play (streaming vs. Unbox download). more » | Other threads
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SoundUnwound
Amazon.com launches database for bands
Amazon is releasing a site called SoundUnwound — a version of IMDB for musicians, editable by anyone like Wikipedia. Few know that IMDB, the movies database, is owned by Amazon.com. But the universal vendor seems to value the data therein — knowing which obscure movies a now-famous actor starred in helps cross-sell DVDs. Most of SoundUnwound's information comes from YouTube, Wikipedia, and MusicBrainz — another open-content music database. You can find out who the sound engineer for Amy Winehouse's studio debut was, if you're so inclined — okay, it's Jimmy Hogarth. With free data, Amazon gets what it pays for, in the form of broken track listings and unknown playtimes on songs, but it's still good enough to help upsell you more MP3s from its struggling music store.
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Comment by macbeach: I didn't know they bought IMDB, but I hope they make some improvements. I'm generally disappointed with what I... more » | Other threads
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Rumomonger
No new Kindle from Amazon this year
"There will be no new version of the Kindle this year," Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman told The New York Times. Berman seems intent on stomping rumors of a new Kindle for Christmas. His message? Stop saving up. Buy some more e-books instead.(Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan) -
acquisitions
The spam-happy history of Amazon.com's new social network Shelfari
Amazon.com's newly acquired book-readers social network, Shelfari, has a bad reputation. The main charges lodged: It has grown its userbase through a shady techniques such as automatically sending site invites to everyone in a new user's email address book. It's also believed to engage in "astroturfing" —- specifically, pretending to be users in blog comments to buff up its image. Gawker last year described the site as "basically social networking rapists" — a perhaps inelegant phrasing, but one that gets the point across. More » -
acquisitions
Amazon.com's purchase of Shelfari locks up competition
The most powerful player in the book business besides Oprah, Amazon.com, just got a little more powerful with the acquisition of Shelfari, a social network for bookworms. Not yet formally announced, the deal would give Amazon total control over a competitor to a similar site, LibraryThing, in which the company has already taken a stake through an earlier acquisition, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter John Cook. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by foobarz: shelfari has a cool site, but nobody ever communicated with each other. more » | Other threads
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e-books
Amazon.com execs: Kindle not quite the huge hit everyone says it is
After a TechCrunch report said that Amazon.com had already sold 240,000 Kindles this year, Wall Street analyst Mark Mahaney called the Kindle "the iPod of the book world." Now Amazon.com says both Mahaney and TechCrunch spoke too soon and without talking to the right people. The right people, according to analysts from McAdams Wright Ragen, being analysts from McAdams Wright Ragen. More »
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Comment by Jordan Golson: @foobarz: I got a 2-week loaner from Amazon.com and liked it so much that I bought one. The screen is... more » | Other threads
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caption contest
Pardon me, do you have any grey poupon?
Amazon.com's electronic-book reader, the Kindle, is a rare find in the wild. The only place we've ever spotted one was in New York's subway system. And that's where a Valleywag reader found this specimen yesterday. Unfortunately, in his excitement, our volunteer paparazzo may have startled the rare creature, perhaps disturbing its mating cycle. You can tell by looking at its eyes. Can you come up with a better caption? Do so in the comments and we'll rename the post with the best one. Yesterday's winner is Sample32 with "This picture would be 10x better if it was accompanied by Australian accents."
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Comment by kimbjo: "Using Kindle is like shagging a fat girl. Fun to ride, but don't let your friends catch you with one". more » | Other threads
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amazon.com
"The Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world"
Despite the fact that you've never seen one in person, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney says Amazon.com will sell 378,000 Kindles this year, accounting for $1.1 billion or 4 percent of Amazon's total revenues by 2010. Earlier this year, Mahaney guessed Amazon would sell about half as many copies of the device, which he now calls Amazon's iPod. What changed? More »
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Comment by Ghede: I think it's the highly portable nature. I have three bookcases full in my room alone. Since it is also... 1 Responses | Other threads
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e-commerce
Amazon offers 1-Click, PayPal-like services to other online stores
Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay are two different levels of PayPal-like services Amazon.com quietly launched on Tuesday. No press release, no front-door promo. Simple Pay works a lot like PayPal — customers at another e-commerce site can use it as an alternative to entering a credit card number. Checkout by Amazon goes further, letting websites make use of Amazon's 1-Click ordering and allowing shoppers to put Amazon.com purchases in the same virtual cart. Previously, Amazon had required retailers to set up on Amazon.com itself. Now, the company is looking to get a piece of the action any way it can.
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By Paul BoutinComment by technobee: This capability has been around for more than a year and hardly anyone's used it. Looks like they just made... more » | Other threads
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amazon.com
Amazon.com and TiVo enable couch-potato lifestyle
Finally realizing the dreams of advertising professionals since the 1950s, Amazon.com and Tivo announced new features to closely integrate shopping with TV watching. Viewers of talk shows — where pitching movies, music, or books vaguely masquerades as entertainment — will now have an opportunity to buy exactly what's being discussed on TV! Fancy the newest obsession of Oprah in her book club or like the CD being flogged by David Letterman's new favorite band? Just buy it with one click of TiVo's remote, and Amazon will deliver. If you like obvious product placements now, you're going to love the future. [NYT]
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Comment by mrfomoco: Hmm, impulse ordering? [Note to self: if they're listed, buy shares of Extenze.] more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Amazon.com S3 crash validates Web 2.0 haters
An unexplained failure briefly knocked out Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service this morning, taking with it parts of Twitter, The Huffington Post, and many other sites. You can track Amazon status yourself — see the red "Service disruption" icons under Status History. Has anyone yet built RescueTime for sites instead of people? We could park a Web 2.0 Failboard on our front page.
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By Paul BoutinComment by ThaiKitchen: Cloud computing has its advantages but reliability continue to be the biggest issue. But as you can see here, [tinyurl.com] ,... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Amazon limps its way to 4 percent of U.S. digital-music market
eMusic CEO David Pakman estimates that Amazon.com's MP3 store may have sold 27 million tracks since opening 6 months ago — which sounds good until you consider that Apple's iTunes moves 2 billion songs a year. Pakman also estimates that Amazon's store is adding $7 million, after the labels' take and expenses. At least people are looking forward to a new Kindle, right? [Silicon Alley Insider]
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Thu Jul 9
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