Blogs on Kindle a Failure or Just Overpriced?

Piers Fawkes of PSFK has not been a fan of the Kindle and I can’t blame him.

Recently, their rather popular blog became available on the Kindle with a 14-day free trial and then the standard Kindle blog subscription rate of $1.99/month.  Here’s what happened:

During the first two week period of sales we added a button advertising the service to all our newsletters, website pages and RSS feeds – approximately 250,000 impressions. As some of you may remember, I penned the opinion piece ‘Kindle’s Not Working‘ last week and these sales figures surely prove statistically that Amazon’s technology is a failure when it comes to blog publishing and readership. It’s crazy to read that the tech media continues to be deluded about Kindle’s success when even with a 14 day free trial and massive awareness among our readership we can’t muster more than one $1.99 a month subscription.    LINK

Now, it isn’t really all that surprising that so few people decided to subscribe to the PSFK blog but I wonder if it has more to do with the $1.99/month pricetag combined Kindle’s failure as a rich media device – and it is a failure with no pictures, no video, etc.

Think about it.  If you are anything like me, you read a fair number of blogs.  In fact, I would say that I currently have over 50 blogs subscribed to in my GoogleReader.  If I wanted to even come close to replicating that experience on the Kindle it would cost me around $100/month or $1200/year just to read blogs that completely free online or via my iPhone.  On top of that, the Kindle is a completely inferior blog reader due to the aforementioned lack of rich media capabilities (or color, for that matter!).

So, while I am sad to hear that the Kindle will not be a revenue-generator for blogs, I think it was foolish for anyone to think otherwise given the overall picture.

Starburst Helps Bloggers Sell Out

Starbursts has put together a multi-tiered web marketing plan.  In addition to a redesigned website (ho-hum) and a YouTube channel nobody seems to be watching (top-viewed spot has less than 1,000 views), the candy-makers have decided to buy themselves some bloggers:

“The candy company has also partnered with video bloggers David Choi, DavidJr, Katers17 and Rhett & Link.

“We have engaged a series of leading bloggers who have established relationships with the millennials target that we pursuing,” said John McCarus, VP and group director of brand content at Digitas/The Third Act.

“What we found out about them is that the way they fit in is by standing out,” Stanley said of the millennials demographic. “They want to share excessively themselves and this is fueled by technology,” he added.

The video bloggers communicate what the Starburst brand stands for in their own styles, McCarus explained. For example, Katers17 created a video talking about her “juiciest” moment, which consisted of a messy tumble into a strawberry patch. “Through all those creative interpretations we’re going to be communicating the whole value and power of sharing across the Web,” he added.” (via)

Gotta hand it to Starbursts.  Makes a lot more sense to use existing voices to shill for them than to try and develop their own original sales force.

Doesn’t seem like any of the bloggers are worried about reader blow-back against taking money for sponsored posts.

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Tipping Point continues to tip…

Yet more evidence that Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point might not be quite so valid.  The anti-Tipping buzz began with this article in Fast Company that takes a good hard look at the work of Duncan Watts, who set out to scientifically test the theories set forth by Gladwell.  What he found largely contradicts much of Gladwell’s thinking.

Now comes this piece in ArsTechnica:

“The amount of online “chatter” about an upcoming album release directly correlates to higher physical album sales, according to two researchers with New York University’s Stern Business School. Professor Vasant Dhar and former student Elaine Chang observed the trends of 108 albums released during the first two months of 2007 to see how different outside elements affected (or predicted) sales once the albums became available, and found that all of them had some effect or another. But certain elements of online chatter—namely blogs and social networks—seemed to be fairly accurate predictors of future success.”

While “influentials” will always have a certain amount of influence, the internet changes the dynamics so that many more people can be influential without ever being singled out in any significant way as “influentials.”  The more small-world influencers out there, the more power they have when they agree on sometime – whether that be an album, a designer or just an idea.