Update 8:12 am PST, Feb 9th, 2009 - Buy Kindle 2.0 (pre-order to be more precise) now. Ships Feb 24th – however, get in line now. All Kindle 1.0 owners get priority provided they order by end of day today (Feb 9th).
It’s interesting to me to see the way blogs, newspapers and websites all chase one another when it comes to reporting news (or for that matter non-news) on the Kindle 2.0 and the Kindle. I don’t have enough experience to know whether this happens across all products, or just across all products that are in demand.
Kindle 2.0 Major Story lines in the last Week
There have been 6 major story lines in the last week or so related to the Kindle -
- Amazon set to unveil new Kindle at Feb 9 Conference? 401 News articles – This definitely qualified as news and spread quickly and far. My experience was that it had spread pretty wide within the first 24 hours.
- Kindle Books arriving on Cell phones. There are 349 news articles on this in the last week – the story broke on the 6th of Feb on the NY Times (as far as I am aware). This was at first missed by a lot of newspapers – However, over the course of the last 2 days, this has become a pretty big piece of news too.
- Google to share all its free public domain books on iPhones and Android Phones. This was a pretty big piece of news too, and spread rather quickly, with 347 articles in a few days.
- Is the Amazon Kindle out pacing early iPod Sales? There are 165 news articles in the last week. This was interesting – however, not exactly news.
- NYTimes’ Keller: We’re looking for ways to charge. There were 88 news articles. Notable for a mention that NYTimes’ Kindle subscriptions were a modest business. This was a good example of a story that was basically non-news and didn’t really spread much.
- Kindle 2.0 Leaked pictures. 54 News Articles. This is just beginning to pick up. BGR broke these leaked pictures a long, long time ago – now someone just added on a random potential price tag to the pictures and this piece of non-news is spreading, although slowly.
The trends that I see are -
- Good, actual breaking news spreads quickly and far – usually getting a lot of news articles and blog posts within the first 24 hours.
- Good news keeps spreading with even more blogs and newspapers picking up on it and usually adding more analysis and thoughts to differentiate their articles from articles already out.
- Bad News spreads quickly at first too – It’s only after the first 30-40 newspapers and blogs have jumped on it that other people begin to realize this isn’t really good news.
- A good test of the importance of a piece of news is the 150 or so news articles threshold. It’s rare for good breaking news to get less mentions (provided its a somewhat popular device or topic we’re talking about).
- There are certain topics and companies for which even uninteresting news catches on – these include Apple, Google, Windows 7, Wii, and the iPhone.
Trends for Kindle News
The lack of official sales figures from Amazon, lack of guidance from them, and the shroud of mystery on current and future plans creates a constant demand for any news related to -
- Sales Estimates, Sales Analysis, Comparisons to other top selling devices.
- Pictures or Speculation on future versions of the Kindle, and even future firmware updates.
- Possible Kindle competitors and advances in technology.
- Any official news from Amazon, when available, gets spread really, really quickly.
There is also a huge market for news on book availability for the Kindle and future Kindle directions (as opposed to future versions) – the former might be related to the lack of a comprehensive ‘New Kindle Releases’ feature at Amazon. The latter is probably related to the fact that a lot of people (including Kindle owners, publishers and authors) are very vested in the future direction of the Kindle and tis impact on the publishing and book industries.
Final Thoughts
For anyone releasing a consumer device it’s worth taking notes on the release, supply concerns, news trends, and continued coverage that the Kindle gets. Amazon have done a really good job of fuelling speculation, increasing customer demand and keeping people interested. In psychological terms, this is creating an open loop -
Start off a topic or an idea, and end the conversation without bringing the discussion to closure. Our basic need to get concrete data and to get closure (so that we can put our minds to rest) means that this open loop captures and spikes our interest. The Kindle doing really well and selling 456,000 units in 2008 becomes a factoid. The Kindle being a potential bestseller and selling an undisclosed number of units leaves unanswered questions, creates doubt and becomes something that at some level we feel we must figure out.
This open loop is why there is still huge interest in all manners of Kindle speculation and Kindle 2.0 news. Just the very act of announcing a press conference without confirming if/when Kindle 2.0 will be released heightens interest. Hopefully Amazon finally kills all the speculation about Kindle 2.0 with some concrete dates and details.
Filed under: news
