Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is buying 13 year old online retail company, Abebooks.com.  Abebooks is based out of Victoria, British Columbia.  Abebooks sells 110 million books, employs 120 people, and has a relationship with 13,000 booksellers.  Abebooks started around the same time as Amazon.com.  Amazon launched in 1994 and AbeBooks launched in 1996.

AbeBooks partially owns LibraryThing, a book social network.  Amazon.com had also previously invested in Shelfari, another book social network.  Abebooks built themselves without venture capital.  AbeBooks made $190 million last year from book sales.

The financial terms of the acquisition were undisclosed.

Update: Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing, provided further insight into the deal (see comment #1).

Here is some additional information from Tim Spalding:

- LibraryThing did not have any knowledge of or influence over this deal.
- The majority of LibraryThing is in my hands. Abebooks holds a minority of the shares, with certain notable but limited rights. This situation does not change when Amazon acquires Abebooks.
- Amazon will not get access to your data. The LibraryThing/Abebooks terms are specific. Abe gets only anonymized and aggregate data, like recommendations, and they can only use it on Abebooks sites (eg., Abebooks.com, Abebooks.de). Nothing has changed here.
- Abebooks customers won’t see much a difference. The name will survive and the Abebooks.com site will continue. Both employees and management will remain in Canada.
- LibraryThing remains LibraryThing. We will continue to uphold and advance LibraryThing values, including open data, strict privacy rules and support for libraries and independent bookstores.

Related Links:
1. SeattlePi
2. Amazon.com
3. AbeBooks.com

Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) have announced that they have joined Twitter’s Board. It was not revealed before today that Jeff Bezos was an investor in Twitter’s rumored $15 million third round of funding [GigaOm].

“Existing partners Union Square Ventures in New York City and Tokyo-based Digital Garage exercised their pro rata rights to participate in this round as well,” wrote Twitter founder, Evan Williams on the Twitter blog.

Twitter chose Bijan because he is a man that understands the direction of Twitter.  Bijan is “super excited about the possibilities.”  Bezos was selected because he is a seasoned veteran and because he is a source of inspiration for Twitter.

“Jeff’s attention to business process details and distinctive, ‘honk-like laugh’ are similarly admirable traits as far as we’re concerned,” added Williams.

Amazon.com’s Alexa Internet Inc. subsidiary company is usually very reliable.  However, there was a temporary outage that caused some concern to many online publications.  Between May 20 and June 3, Alexa was not reporting updated traffic rankings on a daily basis.

Alexa is best known for their toolbar, an add-on to browsers that report a site’s 3 month ranking and harvests data for generating rankings.  On May 23, Alexa updated their toolbar for Firefox 3.0.

Amazon bought Alexa for $250 million in Amazon.com stock in 1999.  Alexa Internet is based in San Francisco, Calif.

The Internet traffic measurement company, Alexa Internet, Inc. has been down for quite some time now.  Today is June 1 and Alexa’s Internet traffic rankings has not updated since May 19.

Normally, Alexa updates daily.  Why isn’t Alexa updating?  There hasn’t been an official announcement, but Allen Stern’s theory is that they might be pulling a Twitter.

There is a sign of life at the company.  I received a notification from the Firefox browser that Alexa launched Sparky version 1.2.1, a plugin that works with Firefox 3.0 in the status bar.

I’m assuming that Alexa’s actual Internet traffic rankings should be working again soon.  This post will be updated when I notice that Alexa starts becoming functional again.

Ann Arbor, Michigan-based, Borders Group Inc. (NYSE:BGP) has been depending on Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) to power their website over the last seven years.  On March 17 2007, the company announced that that they were planning to sever ties with Amazon and compete directly with them.

“We expect to drive sales and profits with it,” stated Borders spokeswoman, Anne Roman in 2007 when talking about the upcoming website.  “We can mesh the in-store sales with online, which is something we have been missing.”

Although the financial information was undisclosed, Seattle PI estimates that the loss of Border’s could cost Amazon.com $80-$160 million in annual revenue. Amazon.com currently powers the websites for Sears Canada & UK, Target Corp., Benefit Cosmetics, Times, Bebe, Marks & Spencer, Lacoste, Mothercare, and AOL’s Shop@AOL. Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) is currently researching the feasibility of buying out Borders. 

Below is the design for the new site:

The new look is very Web 2.0.  The new website uses a Flash-based feature called The Magic Shelf that allows the user to browse up, down, left, and right through a bookshelf.  Border’s website also monitors your book tastes and has a Picked For You feature.

The website also features visual media programs such as live store performances on Borders Live at 01, chefs in the Borders Kitchen, and discussions in the living room with Borders Book Club.  The website also directly connects with Borders Rewards membership coupon cards.

Compared to the old Border’s website, the new version is a lot more creative.  The old version look very identical to Amazon.com itself.  The only problem with the new site is that it struggles with search engine optimization.  The site is ranked 300,000+ on Alexa compared to Amazon.com’s rank 29.  Borders needs search optimization experts to help them so that when someone searches for a book on Google, Borders is up there with Amazon.

According to my Google toolbar, Borders’ website doesn’t appear to have a PageRank either.  This could directly affect their traffic.  Google should give them a PageRank boost.

Information Sources:
[1] Seattle Pi: Borders shelving Amazon alliance by Craig Harris
[2] MLive.com: Barnes & Nobles puts together team to look at buying rival Ann Arbor-based Borders by Stefanie Murray

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has launched a new service called Live Search cashback.  When searching for products using Live Search cashback, users will be able to compare prices among multiple stores and find out the best deal. 

The model around this service sounds very familiar.  Amazon.com, a company that is about 1 or 2 towns away from Microsoft provides the same service.

“The new service is part of a broader effort by Microsoft to try to attract more consumers to its Internet search service and better compete with Google,” wrote Robert A. Guth, editor at the WSJ.  I agree with Guth that Microsoft is lagging on search competition against Google, but this model does not sound like Microsoft is trying to compete against Google directly.

The cashback that consumers earn by using Live Search cashback will be sent via check or PayPal.  Billing details will have to be sent to Microsoft.  Some of the store savings data aggregated by Live Search cashback includes Circuit City, Newegg, Overstock, KMart, PCUniverse, Sears, Digitalfotoclub.com, Compuvest.

Below is a screen shot I took when searching for a 16GB iPod Touch.  Live Seach cashback found me a price of $330.52 and The Apple Store sells it for about $399 (with free engraving if ordered online).  Saving $69 using Live Search cashback is pretty good.  I searched for the same thing on Amazon.com and it found a price range of $305-$369.

“In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!” wrote Geoffrey Mack on the Alexa Blog.

Alexa statistics have shifted and the bloggers were some of the first people to react. First thing I noticed was that TechCrunch’s rank felt about 1,000 and it’s ranking is now comparable to LifeHacker.com’s. This seems like an accurate assumption since at one point, TechCrunch was transparent with their hits and LifeHacker still is. Around the time I compared TechCrunch’s hits on SiteMeter vs. LifeHacker’s, I found that TechCrunch’s hits were less than half yet still had a much higher Alexa ranking.

Based on the new ranking that Alexa assigned Pulse 2.0, it seems like a fairly accurate assumption as well. Over the last couple months, Pulse 2.0’s Alexa ranking was falling, but hits were increasing overall. Today, our ranking jumped from 156,000 to 102,000. I think that Alexa is accounting for our overall increase in hits now.

Great job, Alexa team!

Over the past couple weeks, there have been some interesting changes in the Alexa Top 10 Global sites.

Battle of The Searches With A Little Video Website In Between (1-5)
1.) Yahoo! has retained their #1 position.  They have millions of users chatting away on their Messenger software, watching Yahoo! Videos, listening to Yahoo! Music, and playing Yahoo! Games.  For Google or Microsoft to take away their user loyalty, it’ll be tough.  Microsoft seems this as being an issue, hence the $44.6 billion offer.

2.) YouTube is the most surprising of all.  YouTube surpassed Google, its own parent company.  This is an indication that everyone that uses the Internet all over the world is interested in video content now more than ever.  Google acquiring YouTube for $1.7 billion was such a bargain for the search company.  Considering that Yahoo! is worth $44.6 billion and they are one rank higher than YouTube, YouTube must be worth at least $30 billion today.  Video startups, this is your time.

3.) Live.com.  This ranking was inevitable for them since Microsoft switched a majority of their online services under this domain name.  Hotmail is now Mail.Live.com, MSN Messenger is now Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Spaces is their free blogging platform, etc.

4.) Google dropped by 1.  They are still in the close running against Microsoft and Yahoo!, but YouTube made up for their fall.  Google could easily pass Live.com if they put YouTube under the Google.com domain, but that would just look ugly.  Imagine having a friend sending you an IM that says “Check out this video at http://YouTube.Google.com/watch?v=raGuLfAruNM” instead of “Check out this video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=raGuLfAruNM.”

5.) MSN.com is becoming the personalized arm for Microsoft.  MSN.com, a news portal also includes My.MSN.com, MSN Video.  MSN.com used to be #3, but is losing traction due to its sister-site, Live.com

The Social Networks And The Open Source Encyclopedia (6-10)
6.) MySpace.com is currently the world’s biggest social network and is owned by News Corp.  MySpace was originally an indie site made for musicians to connect with each other and was created by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe.  MySpace is now being used by News Corp. as real estate for advertisements.  News Corp. is also pushing the MySpace brand in major aired events like the Super Bowl.  During the Super Bowl, it was pointed out that advertisements can be watched on MySpace.com/SuperBowlAds

7.) Facebook is the $15 billion valuated social network that is now an exclusive advertisement partner with Microsoft.   Facebook quickly lifted the mat from under MySpace.  In the last 2 years, Facebook started allowing applications and allowed anyone to register for their site, characteristics that were very MySpace and Friendster-like.  But Facebook has grown rapidly on the Alexa top sites and those are a couple of the reasons.  Will Facebook beat MySpace within the next few months?  Very likely.

8.) Hi5 is one of the biggest social networks in Latin America.  The company has 98 million users and was founded by Ramu Yalamanchi in 2002.   Hi5 recently launched a Chinese version of their site and raised $15 million last month.

9.) Wikipedia is the most well-known use of open-source today.  Content on Wikipedia is all provided by its users.  The company was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.  By the end of 2007, Wikipedia had 9.25 million articles written in 253 languages.  Not too shabby for a 7 year old online encyclopedia.

10.) Orkut, another Google property founded by Orkut Büyükkökten is another social network. This is also the most visited web site in Brazil.  I bet if you go to an Internet Cafe in Brazil, at least half the people will visit Orkut at least once or twice, just like if you go to any college campus in America, you’ll see Facebook loaded on many of the screens in the libraries.  As a matter of fact, 55% of all Orkut’s traffic is from Brazil and 17% is from India.

The Alexa Blog is located at: http://awis.blogspot.com/.

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]