News and Analysis

Giant Mess of News 12/9/2011

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Yeah, yeah I know news was moving away from roundups to more detailed posts and analyses, but damn, today had a lot of news.

Games:
Games were the largest share of Android's first 10 billion downloads. Yes, this is from the department of 'duh', but it's a reminder of the power and size of that market share.

B.S.:
Zynga tells investors it can double it's paying customers. I do not believe this possible in the short or medium term – but they didn't promise WHEN it could happen.

Legal Messes:
Apparently there are hacking charges against Groupon. This is more changing contracts/contacts, but also . . . well read the article.  Groupon's having bad times lately.

On Windows 8? Microsoft can change/remove apps apparently, at least that's the current plans. That's gonna go over well (anyone remember the infamous Kindle glitch?).  Watch this if you're a developer (or a lawyer)

There's some foofaraw in German where Motorola won seriously against Apple over a patent issue, but the resolution is anything but clear. This may come back later – or accelerate into further nastiness. Also remember who Motorola is part of now . . .

Also Apple lost in Australia over It's attempt to ban the Samsung Galaxy tablet, over – you got it – patents. This gets into ugliness involving countersuits and general stupidity.

Yes, patent suits are out of hand.  Yes they are killing innovation.  No, it's not being called out enough.

– Steven Savage

Amazon has a new Kindle promotional fund and effort

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Details are here.

Basically Amazon sets aside $6 million, the KDP Select fund.

If an author makes their book exclusive to Kindle for at least 90 days then it may go into the lending library, and you can earn part of this fund.

Sounds like it's a way to lock down indies, though oddly I can see this being too easy – the majority of my sales are through Kindle and I promote platform-independent.

But how will people react?  Well I confess I got an "oooh" reaction out of this myself – then realized there's no guarantee I'd get into the lending library anyway.

Still I think it shows Amazon is thinking long tail – they want to lock down authors, and they want to be a full-service platform.  This is important with eBooks, since though the Kindle may be easy, a lot of people are publishing in PDF and ePub anyway.

More as we find it.

– Steven Savage

 

Occupy, Banks, and the Spotlight

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It's looking like the Occupy Movement has gotten the attention of Bank of America with their new Occupy Your Homes anti-foreclosure protests. What's remarkable is that BofA seems concerned enough to send out a memo – and realizes they're being targeted.

I think they're a bit nervous, and they should be:

  • This rebrands the OWS movement in a way that provides easy messaging and positive image.
  • It calls attention to foreclosure and home issues – and can keep the issues in the news.
  • Anything the bank does backfires.
  • The backfires will call attention to bad banking practices, MERS, etc.
  • Most people aren't too happy with banks.

If this continues (and my guess is it will), then it's going to keep the public eye on banks and their activities past and present. This could lead to deeper investigations (if not just more awareness) of serious problems in the system.

As we all know the banks have a lot of problems still – and frankly I don't think they can stand the scruity and the lawsuits that would follow.  So this shift in tactics could have a lot of effects on the banks and how they're treated.

– Steven Savage