Recently Amazon.com placed a job posting on Gamasutra indicating that they will be introducing a new feature for Video Game and Software Downloads.  This feature complements their Unbox service where users can download software, movies, and music right away.  A softawre development engineer position is open with The Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team at Amazon.  This Team is responsible for “digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon website, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store.”

I did a search for PC Games on Amazon and it seems like they have a lot available for purchase.  Being able to download them right away would save consumers time in having to wait for the shipping and handling.  And with all the reviews available for each game on the web site, it helps consumers be able to decide whether certain games are the right fit for them.   More to develop on this story later.

[Information Source: Download Squad]

IMDb, subsidiary of Amazon.com has filed a trademark application for the term SoundUnwound.  The trademark would cover:
“Providing information regarding, and in the nature of, social networking services; online social networking services designed for people with a common desire to meet other people with similar interests; Social networking services for music enthusiasts.”

This means that IMDb may be interested in putting together a social network for those who are interested in music.  IMDb has a little bit of social networking built around their website in terms of discussions, reviews, comments, and the ability to put together a profile.  Building a network that revolves around music would put them in a market that complements the one that they are already in: movies.

IMDb could be building a music database that could be potentially drawing from the same data Amazon.com has.  Amazon.com has a full listing of all the tracks on almost every music album selling on their website.  Building a social network around that has potential to become successful.  Other music social networks out there include Amie Street and iLike.

[Found via Mashable]

I just noticed that on my Alexa.com toolbar (owned by Amazon.com), Google’s rank looked a little different.  The web information company’s toolbar was telling me that Google is no longer glazed in bronze.  It had a silver spoon in its mouth.  Oh for crying out loud, If you don’t get my metaphor, what I’m saying is that Google is now ranked #2 and MSN is ranked #3.

Alexa’s Global Top 10:
1.) Yahoo!
2.) Google
3.) MSN
4.) YouTube
5.) Live.com
6.) MySpace
7.) Orkut
8.) Facebook
9.) Wikipedia
10.) Hi5

Looking at the top 10 web sites, Google has the most presence on Alexa.  They are ranked #2 and they own #4 and #7.  Whereas, Microsoft only owns #3 and #5.  Google also has a presence on #6 because they have an exclusive advertising partnership with MySpace.com.  Microsoft counteracted that move by signing an exclusive partnership with #8 website, Facebook.com. It seems like both companies were playing with their domains a little bit over the last year or so.  We saw the rise of Live.com this past year and GMail.com shifted over to the Google.com servers.  Below is a chart comparison from Alexa:

Notice the instant growth of Live.com?  This is perhaps because Hotmail.com shifted over to Live.com servers.  Seeing as how Live.com is constantly growing and MSN.com is slipping a little bit, I’m curious to see what Microsoft will do with MSN to ensure it doesn’t slip more.  And also, what will Yahoo! do to maintain #1.  Over the next couple years, we should see some interesting changes in the Top 10, especially seeing as how it felt like YouTube and Wikipedia came out of nowhere and claimed their current spots.

 “Amazon MP3 is an all-MP3, DRM-free catalog of a la carte music from major labels and independent labels, playable on any device, in high-quality audio, at low prices,” stated Bill Carr, Amazon.com’s VP for Digital Music. “This new digital music service has already been through an extensive private beta, and today we’re excited to offer it to our customers as a fully functional public beta. We look forward to receiving feedback from our customers and using their input to refine the service.”

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) officially launched Amazon MP3 today, an online store that sells over 2 million songs from over 180,000 aritsts and 20,000 labels.  All of these MP3s do not contain DRM (digital rights management) software.  This already provides a competitive advantage and incentive to use Amazon over iTunes.  When purchasing a song from iTunes, a user is limited to what they can do with the song.

Most of the songs are priced from $0.89-$0.99.  The top 100 best-selling songs are generally marked as $0.89 on Amazon MP3.  Most albums are from $5.99-$9.99 on Amazon MP3 as well. 

Amazon is also utilizing 1-Click shopping technology that allows users to seamlessly add MP3s to Windows Media Player, Winamp, iTunes, etc.  Amazon MP3 could drastically effect shopping for CDs in stores and we will probably see a lot of iTunes’ song purchasing market-share get taken away from them.

Amazon MP3 can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011 

A press release was sent out stating that Nielsen//NetRatings^[1], a solid source for online page view measurements, will halt monitoring user activity based on page views and will now focus the length of time spent. The official announcement by the company is expected to be made tomorrow. What this means is that because of today’s web technologies, web traffic rating and measurement companies need to start reconsidering the criteria set on determining which web sites are more popular than others.

The biggest example of such technologies is AJAX. AJAX is a technology in which users can take actions on particular websites without having to be redirected to multiple pages. Digg is an excellent example of such technology use. On the homepage of Digg, users can “digg” stories and a vote will be accumulated, all without having to leave www.digg.com:
Also, every story that is submitted on Digg has its own individual page where more AJAX is implemented:

Clicking on the Comments, Who Dugg or Blogged It?, Blog It, and Email It tabs do not require a user to be redirected to another page.

“Based on everything that’s going on with the influx of Ajax and streaming, we feel total minutes is the best gauge for site traffic,” stated Scott Ross, Director of Product Marketing at Nielsen. “We’re changing our stance on how the data should be” used.

AOL LLC and Yahoo! Inc. also benefits from the upcoming changes by Nielsen//NetRatings. Nielsen will credit both services with the time spent on their messenger platforms. About 25 billion minutes was spent AOL Instant Messenger and 20 billion minutes were spent on Yahoo! Messenger service this past May.

Alexa Internet Inc., a subsidiary company of Amazon Inc. is also known for web monitoring that accounts for traffic solely based on users that have the Alexa Toolbar product installed. Will this new initiative by Nielsen pressure Alexa to tweak their tweaking technologies as well? I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

References:
[1] nielsen-netratings.com
[2] Alexa: About the Alexa Traffic Rankings
[3] Associated Press: Nielsen scraps Web page view rankings (via Yahoo! News)

I recently received an e-mail to check out an early look of Askville[1], a questions and answers website created by Amazon.com. Right away, I can tell you that this startup could very much compete head-on with Yahoo! Answers. However, the advantage that Yahoo! has over Amazon.com is that Yahoo! has a lot more users. Will that hinder Askville from taking off? Not likely.

The questions that are showing up on Amazon.com tend to revolve around consumer devices. For example, dwdrums2032 asks, “Why are digital cameras much morsensative to movement than 35mm was?”

There is a big box with a cursor at the top of the page where users can ask any question, but there is a 120 character limit for the title. As a user becomes more proactive on the webiste, they are assigned points. The points will then determine how reliable that user is in submitting answers. Amazon.com user IDs work as the login.

Questions last 7 days if nobody answers them. Questions receive a maximum of 5 answers. Each answer can be voted for on a 1-5 scale, 1 for Great and 5 for Awful.

Widgets for the service are available too. Users can add favorite videos from Google Video, Bolt.com, and YouTube. A Google Map can also be implemented to see where the user answering the question is coming from. Amazon.com provides a widget as well to display a picture of the product that one may have a question about.

The points earned are called Quest Coins. The Askville team is currently figuring out ways to redeem prizes with Quest Coins being the currency.

The Askville Blog is available at: http://askville-blog.amazon.com/[2]

[1] Amazon.com: Askville
[2] Askville Blog

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)[1] is rumored to be considering an acquisition of Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)[2].  Yesterday, Netflix share prices gained $1.06 (5%) to $22.45.  Netflix’s shares have been struggling due to intensity of rivalry from other mail movie distributors such as Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE:BBI)[3].  Brian Bolan, a Jackson Securities[4] analyst heard about the speculation of the buyout from industry contacts.

In regards to Amazon, Bolan stated “They’ve got excess currency, if you will. Netflix, on  the other hand, has been facing stiff competition from Blockbuster and everyone  else, so they’ve seen their stock go lower.”

From a supply-chain management point-of-view, the potential synergy between Netflix and Amazon.com makes total sense.  Amazon has an online video streaming service called Unbox and Netflix has a similar service called Instant Movies Online.  If Amazon.com were to acquire Netflix, they would gain Netflix’s subscribers and add be able to add more to the movie inventory.

The founder of Netflix is Reed Hastings and he serves on the Board for Microsoft as well.  Jeff Bezos also interacts with Microsoft often as his company, Amazon.com is based in Seattle, Washington.  As more information is disbursed about the potential acquisition, Pulse 2.0 will write about it.  Keep checking back often.

[1] Amazon.com
[2] Netflix.com
[3] Blockbuster.com
[4] JacksonSecurities.com

There is an old military hospital that rests on a hill in Seattle, WA.  It may look dull on the outside, but what is on the inside are some of the most brilliant software developers from all over the world.  It is the headquarters of Amazon.com.  A software engineer at Amazon gave me a tour of the place and one of the most elegant views I’ve seen from the headquarters is the Seattle skyline:

If I remember correctly, this view is from a side window outside of the Amazon conference room that Bill Gates sometimes uses for press meetings.

There is also a UPS office on the bottom floor of the Amazon headquarters that exemplifies Amazon’s need for a strong supply chain converging with technology.  This brings me to an article that I read today in The New York Times that I found very interesting.  Amazon.com distribution centers will now support items sent by independent sellers.  Now if you buy items on eBay or Google Checkout, your package may show up on Amazon’s renown smiley-faced boxes.

“Think of as it Amazon 2.0. Though the company’s primary business appears to be booming — it announced a 32 percent increase in revenue this week, which sent its stock soaring 40 percent in the last two days — revenues will inevitably flatten as the company matures. If it wants to keep treating investors to torrid growth, the company needs to develop other ways to make money” wrote Brad Stone, an author of The New York Times.

Two days ago, I wrote about how Amazon/Alexa is blocking Statsaholic from using their API.  Today I’ll report the other side of the story: Alexa’s side.

Alexa says that using the name Alexa is not tolerable in any circumstances, so it had a problem with the name Alexaholic.  “We reached out to Mr. Hornbaker [founder of Alexaholic] last year in an attempt to resolve the problem amicably. We even explored an acquisition, which we didn’t have to do,” writes Geoffrey Mack, an Alexa representative on his blog.  “Unfortunately, it became clear over time that Mr. Hornbaker did not want to stop trading off the Alexa name. This left Alexa with no alternative but to bring legal action to recover the misappropriated name.”

Hornbaker then was legally forced to change the name Alexaholic.  Hornbaker chose the name Statsaholic, but was still using the Alexaholic domain to transfer traffic to Statsaholic.  Mack also wrote “Mr. Hornbaker is in fact not using our web service to generate the traffic graphs on his website. Instead of obtaining the traffic data for a fee using the API which Alexa offers, he has chosen to pirate proprietary Alexa data by taking Alexa traffic graphs without permission.  Mr. Hornbaker is now trying to extract more value from Alexa by turning this into a PR issue, which he admits is a deliberate strategy.”

Alexa stated that they will be pursuing this issue aggressively and make sure that they are compensated for any losses.  In this case, I’d say that Alexa has a stronger argument especially because of the piracy involved.