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More on the Kindle and Why Amazon will rule the world and Facebook is toast…

Written by Jimmy

Tati opened the door on this one as she finally discovered the virtues of not burning down trees by the zillions.… First, I definitely hated the idea of a Kindle, but the longer my business trips have become the more books I needed to haul around so finally I admitted defeat and bought one.    Here are my five top loves and only three top hates with the kindle:

Top Loves:

1. I love being able to download my favorite newspapers no matter where I am in the world.    I just returned from Spain and was able to read all about the England loss.  What fun.
2. I love reading book reviews and then ‘pre-ordering’ new books and then suddenly having them down load by surprise while I travel.   I buy a lot more books now and never forget to get the books I thought I would like in reviews.
3. I like changing the font so I can read without reading glasses, and I love the little light embedded in my case that let’s me read in bed.  And it works in the sunlight.  I like that.
4. I like the percent thing.  I’m not on page 347 anymore, I’m 43% through the book.
5. I like the dictionary and notes/comments access.  I’ve learned a lot of new words and some of them have gotten me into a wee bit of trouble with the law.

Top Hates

1. I hate it when I can’t switch back and forth between the text and appendices.   I read a lot of history and I like to work through maps and details on certain things and you can’t do it easily.  this should be a main benefit but it is clear that authors aren’t yet involved with the kindle versions.  If I was an author I would want to make sure that a ‘menu’ click would let my readers bounce to key reference material that I made available.  Reading ‘game of thrones’ and wish to the Lord I had access to all the family tree appendices.
2. The graphics, maps and photos are rubbish.  Reading newspapers is like reading a cable back when I was in government 30 years ago.
3. I hate that getting a newspaper automatically deletes the previous issue (although I discovered that you can easily grab back old issues on line).

BUT THAT’S NOT WHY I’M WRITING THIS BLOG.  The real reason is to give my top reasons why I think Amazon is winning and Facebook is losing…

1. As far as I know, Facebook is the only big internet IPO where the founder has no idea how to monetize the concept.  Gates, Jobs, Bezos, the Google Boys, had all sorted the first phase of the real commercial model before they went public.   Mark sorted one thing out and should be spectacularly rewarded – a very cool social media concept – but he hasn’t sorted out how to make the money the market value assumes.   But he has control.  And you made him very rich, so not clear he has a lot to work for from an economic stand point.   It is like giving a private equity firm a 2% management fee for a ridiculously big fund.   Game over.  Much as they might want you to believe it, they really do have most of what they need and aren’t too worried about carry.
2. It seems to little ol’ me that almost everything that makes Facebook an extremely cool user experience is antithetical to making money through corporations.   We all use Facebook and for reasons I don’t under stand, my kids are willing to put on all sorts of private things (and photos!) that I worry will haunt them.   That sense of privacy doesn’t bother them.  But turn around and ask them how they feel if Mark sold their pictures, walls, comments to a corporation to target them… and they don’t like it too much.  Becomes the opposite of cool.  And I think Facebook will become the Avril Lavigne of social media.   [There’s a story here:  all through the kids birthdays, from roughly 5-12 I made a mixed CD for them.   In Dec, for Tory at her 8 birthday, I put on Complicated.  thumbs up from the kid parade.  The next Feb I but on Complicated for Morgan’s 6th Birthday.  I was an absolutely loser because Avril was SO yesterday.]
3. Oh, and the mobile thing.  Where Facebook is going, where most advertisers aren’t.
4. And I know a lot of guys in marketing for the big corporates.  I know a lot of guys that are passionate about social media.  They believe it is the future and they are ground breaking and advocates.  Where is there money going?   They are hiring ‘community organizers’ to manage community specific brand discussions.  So if there’s a rat in your pizza, and you post the news on twitter, there’s someone there to deal with it and manage a community discussion.  it is about dialogue, not about advertising on line as you did through TV.  So don’t be fooled.  When you hear business people say they are increasing spend on social media, they are.  But it ain’t going to Facebook – it’s going to community managers that are in constant discussion with customers.  As it should be.
5. But the real rub is the more visionary you get about what Facebook might be, the more you make me want to buy Amazon stock.  The arguments are numerous.    “But, look at all the time on line.   Our users  are telling us everything about their needs and desires.   Surely we can monetize that.   And look at all the demographic data we get.  Surely that is worth something.”    Hmmm, but Amazon  has all that.  They know what  I am buying!  They have permission from me to make recommendations!  They have endless data on my buying behavior not my gossip.    And they get better and better – see ‘The kindle.’  And wait ’til you see kindle Fire.     Amazon is a fantastic user experience, which gets better as they use purchase and search behaviour to provide better and more targeted recommendations.  AND THEIR USERS WANT THIS.  There is no bait and switch.     The whole point is to improve my buying of things.    That’s why I go on.  They don’t ask me to get into a long conversation with a lost high school girlfriend and then use that data to sell me a socket wrench.  They ask me to buy books and use my purchases to recommend more books to purchase.  Simples.
6. Oh, and it seems to me, the facebook guys knew all that and cashed out, leaving a bunch of sentimental fans to hold their stock.    i”m not sure what incentives any of those guys have to fix things – they are rich, they are cool but I’m not sure they’ll ever  sort out why their declining stock is worth its value.

One word of warning about all this.  I have never been right in an investment decision my whole life.  Not once.   If you said up a hedge fund, the whole purpose of which was to do the opposite of what I think, you’d make googles and googles of loot.

Having said that, it’s not like we haven’t been the oracle of all things internet.  We’ve been writing about it for years, including our now infamous song, King of the Biosphere:

And secretly, we all like Sk8terboi.

Jimmy

(Lisbon)