Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

The Kindle 2 has an important role to play as Newspapers and Radio Stations search for new technologies that evolve and improve their product offerings and generate additional streams of income. The two key areas I see Amazon’s Kindle play a vital role is

1. Creating a Content Delivery System that is literally gigantic and  allows content providers to distribute their content to consumers via a variety of channels, and even via combinations of the channels.
2. Creating a source of multiple streams of income and the opportunity to test and play around with income generation.

Amazon can literally reduce the job of content providers to focusing on creating good content and focusing on leveraging existing ways to make money and testing out new ways of making money.  Lets start with the opportunities for distributing Content that Kindle2/Kindle Mobile create.

Part I – A New Content Delivery Mega-System.

Kindle 2s and Kindles Carve out a Niche

Kindles in the hands of customers are carving out a niche that newspapers, magazines, and at some point perhaps even Radio Stations can use to test out their offerings. Its a closed, somewhat safe environment to see how new models work, test out different possibilities and figure out efficient models. The Kindle is the largest, most comprehensive user behaviour test for new content models you could create.

Kindle Mobile Expands the Product Offerings into new channels

Kindle Mobile lets newspapers etc. take their content and spread them out across different channels like cellphones, netbooks, and more and see how well they work in these environments. They also create possibilities for up-sells and selling product offerings that are otherwise impossible. While it is possible for large companies like the NY Times to come up with excellent on-line and mobile offerings, most Newspapers have neither the resources nor the inclination to build out and test a whole new Content Delivery System. Kindle 2 and Kindle Mobile provide this. Its literally telling a Newspaper -

Send us the content i.e. a well formatted RSS stream of your product and we’ll open up these new channels and markets for your content - people reading news on their cellphones, people browsing via their netbooks and laptops, and more. Not only that, we also handle the whole charging people, managing fraud, accounting and other aspects and you get a nice monthly cheque.

If you look at the difference between simply creating a RSS content stream Vs creating product offerings for every new emerging technology, the difference is huge and Amazon’s Kindle Mobile Content Delivery Platform becomes rather compelling.

A Hybrid Kindle 2-Kindle Mobile becomes a powerful Content Delivery Network

We really are looking at the creation of a Content Delivery Network across the Internet, the social web, and the mobile web. A big reason content creators haven’t been able to use new technologies well is that there’s a large overhead to understanding and building for every new technology. Just to deliver to the various channels that exist today, we’re looking at -  

1. Internet Explorer and Mozilla for Windows.
2. Safari for Mac.
3. Windows Platform.
4. Macintosh.
5. iPhone Apps. 
6. Xbox 360 Live and other console networks.
7. NetFlix.
8. BlackBerry Apps. 
9. Nokia Apps. 
10. Social Network Apps – Facebook, OpenSocial, etc. 
11. Twitter, FriendFeed etc.
12. Many More devices and channels.

As a content provider I want to focus on my core competency i.e. creating great content, and let some company work on building out a Giant, Streamlined Network that delivers my Content to these and more channels. Amazon is literally seeding such a network with the Kindle, Kindle 2, and Kindle Mobile. Mr. Bezos has openly acknowledged that Netbooks and Cell Phones are a vital part. Which brings us to monetization.

Part II: Revenue Streams

Content Delivery Network = Revenue Generation Network

There’s already one established method of generating revenue that Amazon has created i.e. subscriptions. When the NY Times says they have 10,000 subscriptions, they’re well aware that if Amazon can get a working model for cell phones and mobile devices, this number could explode.

This is also where Amazon’s WhisperSync comes in – Imagine being able to start reading the news on your laptop at work, checking news headlines and sports scores in the Starbucks line on your phone, and then finishing your newspaper on your Kindle or eReader. It literally will be a seamless Content Delivery Network that is truly mobile. A newspaper that takes the form of whatever most convenient device you have at hand.

Testing out New Revenue Models and Advertising.

There is also the opportunity to create alternate models that are fully or partially supported by Advertising. There are a lot of other revenue models that can be experimented with and will be – Testing out a new revenue model becomes exponentially easier as content providers just have to create the product once and then can let Amazon take over. Amazon handles the store fronts, the payment collections, the distribution and other aspects. I can’t even imagine how much more convenient it is for a newspaper to have Amazon handle all this, and just focus on content.

Content that is Paid For Vs Free Content.

Jakob Nielsen has a belief that Google is basically making money off of other people’s website content. While I think of Google more as a starting point, I can understand why he’d feel this way. Google basically promotes the idea of free content – the fundamental way Google looks at content is free. It really does want to organize and share the world’s information for free and make money off of advertising.

Amazon is taking a completely different approach and looking at Content as something you pay for. The focus really is on consumers consuming paid content – blogs, newspapers, magazines are all paid. On the net most of these are free.

The current model of giving away your product for free and making money off of Ads isn’t the only one and, in my opinion, might be the worst. The two models that are much more powerful are -

1. Paid Content (and paid products). 
2. Providing a Service to Traffic of Good Intent and making money off that service.

Its difficult for content providers to be able to charge on the Net because consumers are, wrongly or rightly, trained to expect free. If you don’t give me your content for free, someone else will.

Amazon is creating channels for content providers into markets that already have expectations of Paid Content – cell phones, Kindle, and more.

Closure

In closing, I feel that Amazon is building out a completely new content paradigm and a new distribution network that lets content creators -

1. ‘Create once, Distribute everywhere’.
2. Generate Sources of revenue since they’re forced to charge for content (so far Amazon doesn’t allow free anything).
3. Create a completely different set of expectations for consumers – separate from the Free Model of the Internet.
4. Focus on their core competency.
5. Experiment and try out a lot of different models. 

WhisperNet and WhisperSync might as well be named $Net - and I do mean that in a good way. It really is going to create a lot of money for entities as big as newspapers right to individual writers, bloggers, content creators – These are all people that are struggling with the free model of the Internet. Credit to Amazon for letting people earn some money off their work.