Everyday there seems to be a new acquisition by Google, a new product offering by Yahoo and new innovations from Microsoft and Apple. So where is Amazon you ask? Everywhere you want them to be…(well?)
Amazon Unbox On Tivo
When I first heard about Amazon Unbox I thought, the masses are not yet accepting of downloading movies on iTunes, what makes Amazon think that people will download from them?
The next strategic move in the “let's pretend IPTV is something new and dress it up for the masses” space came from Apple with its iTV. This move was less than inspiring (although I am sure there is an Apple fanboy or two who would argue that statement, whether or not they have ever used an iTV). Why are people going to shell out 3-500 dollars to do something that they can already do with their home computer (and are largely not doing)?
Not Sold!
Now Amazon has fired back with a strategic alliance with Tivo. This to me makes the most sense so far. People already have their Tivo’s hooked up to their TV’s, getting rid of the need to connect a PC to a TV (of course, I, and the rest of the digerati have this type of setup, but I am not so sure the mass market is setup this way). I don’t think it is a silver bullet, but it is a step in the right direction.
On To Something Completely Different; Askville (so Amazon wants to play games, huh!)
The quest for the perfect search engine continues. Jason Calacanis is in with his Mahalo human engine, there are about 200 new multimedia engines, and now Amazon has thrown its hat in the ring (ok, I know this is not true, their hat has been in for a while but it feels like they are only now getting serious), but why I ask? What are they trying to do with this? Are they going to compete with Google and Yahoo, or are they simply adding value to their current empire?
With their recent launch of Askville it is apparent that Amazon is going to be getting more aggressive with their A9 product. But are they innovating?
Well, they say they are with their lofty claims about Clickriver Ads and Open Search, but to me they seem like no more than a PPC program and a meta search engine. I suppose I could be wrong, I will just sit here and wait for someone from Amazon to contact me and fill me in.
Anyhow, the reason for my initial interest was due to the fact that I saw Mark Wallace blog about this on 3pointD. Due to the fact that Mark does not generally blog about search, I knew that there was something else here, and indeed there was. Take a look at the gaming nature of how Amazon has set up their human powered engine. To me this is very intriguing, although I am not so sure that the wisdom of crowds will be able to combat the wisdom of spammers that will inevitably attempt to stifle this effort.
Tags: amazon, askville, google, microsoft, apple, Unbox, tivo, itunes, IPTV, iTV, PC, Jason Calacanis, Mahalo, Human powered search, A9, Clickriver ads, Open Search, meta search, Mark Wallace, 3pointd, gaming