A Nook Owner Tests the Kindle Platform; How HuffPo Is Making Money Off Comments
Posted By Aggregated Content On January 29, 2013 @ 12:00 pm In ebook,ereaders | 4 Comments
[1]By Brian Howard and James Sturdivant
I own a Nook Simple Touch. Maybe it’s because I root for underdogs or maybe it’s because I chafe at platform lock-in and proprietary file formats, but I’ve been quite happy with life on the B&N ebook platform.
Then, on Friday, Amazon announced its Stephen King Kindle Single exclusive, “Guns.” [2] In the short essay, King, whose book Rage had been linked to several instances of school violence, weighs in on the gun control issue. (King penned Rage as a high schooler. The book was published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym and has since been taken out of print [3] at the author’s request.)
I forked over the 99 cents, downloaded the Kindle app for my iPad and read it on Saturday as I was homebrewing a batch of beer. It was, to be honest, my first real time spent in the Kindle ecosystem and, well, it was enjoyable. I liked that I could see what the most highlighted passages were. I appreciated that I could share quotes on Facebook (and not just links to the book as you can sometimes do with the Nook interface). While I sometimes think that Amazon.com’s UX is lacking, it’s clearly something it pays attention to in the Kindle.
Make no mistake, I still like my Nook a lot, and will likely champion it past the point that it’s reasonable to do so. But in light of today’s news about B&N, and my weekend with “Guns,” it’s ever clearer just how stiff the competition is.
—Brian Howard [4]
Gosh Darn if That Doesn’t Make Sense
[5]Figuring out what to do with user comments has long been a bugaboo for online publishers. People just love to scroll through all that fervent sharing looking for kindred spirits, weak arguments or conspiracist crazies—surely there must be a way to make some money off it!
Well, the Huffington Post and parent company AOL may have just figured it out. A new “conversations” feature, written about today at paidContent.org [6], identifies and breaks out specific conversations from within the thousands of comments HuffPo articles generate, allowing visitors to read (and add to) conversation threads on a separate Web page. Huffington Post CTO John Pavley told Paid Content that ads from AOL will be served alongside these conversations, allowing for targeting of highly-engaged readers.
Think about it: people on all sides of the Manti Te’o debate [7] can have their unique predilections catered to! OK, maybe not the best example. But you get the point.
—James Sturdivant [8]
* This post [9] originally appeared on the website of Book Business magazine, a TeleRead sister publication.
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Article printed from TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics: http://www.teleread.com
URL to article: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/monday-musings-a-nook-owner-tiptoes-onto-the-kindle-platform-making-money-off-comments/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.teleread.com/?attachment_id=77684
[2] Kindle Single exclusive, “Guns.”: http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/article/stephen-king-publishes-kindle-single-guns-available-exclusively-kindle-store/1
[3] taken out of print: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_%28Stephen_King_novel%29#End_of_publication
[4] Brian Howard: http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/search/?itc=p&action=filter&addFilter=entity_pn:%22Brian%20Howard%22
[5] Image: http://www.teleread.com/?attachment_id=77685
[6] written about today at paidContent.org: http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/28/blah-blah-blah-huffpos-new-conversations-will-improve-comments-and-make-money-for-aol
[7] all sides of the Manti Te’o debate: http://www.waff.com/story/20618036/commentary-teo-story-once-hard-to-turn-away-from-now-hard-to-believe
[8] James Sturdivant: http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/search/?itc=p&action=filter&addFilter=entity_pn:%22James%20Sturdivant%22
[9] post: http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/article/monday-musings-a-nook-owner-tiptoes-onto-kindle-platform/1
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4 Comments To "A Nook Owner Tests the Kindle Platform; How HuffPo Is Making Money Off Comments"
#1 Comment By Juli Monroe On January 29, 2013 @ 12:28 pm
I don’t own a Simple Touch, so I haven’t tested it, but it’s supposed to be fairly easy to root and install the Kindle app on it. Both ecosystems in one device. As far as I can tell, you can’t do the same with the Kindle Touch.
#2 Comment By Gbm On January 29, 2013 @ 4:19 pm
“I liked that I could see what the most highlighted passages were. I appreciated that I could share quotes on Facebook.”
Those are things that I do not care for in an ereader.
bernie
#3 Comment By Vicki On January 29, 2013 @ 11:33 pm
You can install the Nook app on any Kindle Fire. Without rooting it.
#4 Comment By Juli Monroe On January 30, 2013 @ 8:27 am
Vicki, very true, and I know lots of people who install various e-reader apps on their Fires.