Chris Walters talks about this in an article on his Booksprung site today. Go over and take a look, maybe you’ll want ads too …
Unless the new ad-supported Kindle is rocking some sort of actual hardware widget that creates magical screensaver ads, the main difference between it and existing “normal” Kindles is probably at the operating system level. And if that’s the case, then it’s possible that Amazon could roll out the same functionality to existing users on an opt-in basis, via an OS update.
“Why would anyone want this?” you ask. Or, if you’re more dramatic (as I suspect many ebook readers are), “Why oh god whyyyyy? I’d rather throw detergent in my eyes!” [rend garment for emphasis]
What opt in is this?
They push software updates to you through their 3G connection.
Right? You think that is optional?
I hardly see the screensavers and home page, so looking at a few ads to get some great offers, why not? $10 for a $20 Amazon gift card and $1 for any album are great deals.
I trust Amazon a lot more with the deal thing than I do LivingSocial or Groupon. Yes, I got my Amazon deal from LivingSocial but their customers was completely unresponsive and I never could get my account cancelled. I ended up entering bogus info instead.
I can’t see a strong argument for opting or buying into this deal. I’m a fan of the creative marketing model here, though. It’s worth their while since the Kindle is more a vehicle than an end in itself. Still, giving Amazon an unlimited time span of displaying ads on my device in exchange for $25? It probably works out to pretty evenly when you consider how little they get per device per ad, but I feel it’s well worth $25 for an ad-free experience.
Eventually if the technology gets cheaper and more advertisers buy into the model I could see them offering a fully ad-supported device, and that would probably garner a much warmer response. After all, if you eliminate the entry costs to e-reading and offer a discount vs. print (though still quite arguably not enough) what’s not to like? That said I’m sure someone will buy into this now, it just won’t be me. 🙂
Teddypig,
They’re not pushing the ads via 3G — the partially ad-supported Kindle is currently available only via a WiFi-Only type Kindle, which protects Amazon from paying 3G charges for the download of image-intensive content.
My thinking has been (tho’ I could be wrong) that the Alerts will be just special-alerts to the Kindle for ANY specials happening Amazon-wide. Those really wanting to see them on their Kindles probably will get some kind of opt-in for a WiFi-only type of downloading of the alerts, but I’d bet they’d also have to take the full-page Kindle screensleeper ads to get those.
Amazon would be smart to make them Kindle-specific offers only. But I haven’t seen this spelled out at this point.
The world is about choice. Sure, no one needs 700 types of mustard in the same store, but there are several to decide from. Amazon isn’t being mean. They are presenting choice. I think it is great. I would like to see them do the same deal with the big Kindle.
If people didn’t want choice, then why does the kindle even exist since we have had paper books for a while now?