Amazon's expanding B2B efforts

The recent news regarding Local Register, Amazon's new mobile payments system, may be the next step in my pet theory that Amazon was designed NOT to be a retailer but rather to be the backbone for retail and take a margin on retail generally.  However, to create the scale and credibility needed to move into these businesses, Amazon first needed to create a massive retailer.  But making money from retail itself is perhaps not the true goal.

For example:
1) Warehousing and third party sales.  Amazon has expanded greatly into storing goods for third parties.
2) Fulfillment and Delivery.  Amazon acts as storefront and handles logistics interfaces for third parties.
3) Finance.  Amazon provides small business lending.
4) Cloud.  This is very well known.
5) Payments.  Now Amazon handles payments for goods that have no other connection to Amazon.
6) Devices.  Although superficially supportive of Amazon's retail business, these are equally supportive of Amazon's third party retail businesses.

What's next?  What does Amazon do that is easily portable and deliverable for third parties?

Targeted broadcast television advertising

Given the high value of digital advertising, much of which is based upon the better targeting, why haven't cable providers and broadcasters joined forces to deliver targeted ads?  I think this should be relatively straightforward (massive because of the numbers but straightforward nevertheless): with broadcasters' permission, cable providers would replace the ads with those better targeted to the specific household.  Delivery should be relatively simple.  Ads could be pre-loaded during low demand periods to avoid the need to stream ads in realtime (DVR equipped cable boxes may be able to do this without hardware modifications).

I believe advertisers would object if they perceive their ratecards as losing value (we paid for x households, instead we got y).  So we would have a combination of broadcast program and narrowcast ads. Which, in fact, is how adserving works generally anyway.  And could very well be why Google is getting in the broadband business.

unlocking liquidity, Ebay and UPS

Ebay made great advances in helping regular people unlock liquidity by finding buyers for otherwise idle property - the "national garage sale" concept meant that, with modest effort, regular people could reach millions of potential customers and turn near-junk into cash.  But I feel that Ebay never reached the finish line of this and, instead, became more of an alternative marketplace for professional retailers.  And I believe this more populist vision stalled because of concerns regarding fraud and reliability.  One solution would be for Ebay to make the very large infrastructure investment to take over the small scale "sell it on Ebay" stores to professionalize and standardize these efforts.  Barring that, the next best choice would be a UPS - not merely adding "sell it on Ebay" to the existing UPS stores but, rather, using the massive UPS warehouses to reimagine the entire business.  The warehousing and shipping power of UPS could bring the necessary reliability to give everyone access to the liquidity that Ebay promised.  Counterparty risk, quality risk, shipping risk and payment risk could all be handled through UPS acting as a middleman.

AppleTV

If I understand this right, AppleTV now streams/redownloads video as well as audio previously purchased from iTunes.  Which means that (setting bandwidth issues aside), when traveling, I can just bring my AppleTV and plug it into a hotel TV and have my entire (to the extent iTunes purchased) video library available.  I currently use the iPad as a video library but even with 64g, the library is limited.  Too bad hotel bandwidth makes this more hypothetical than useful for now.

What is Pastore's background?

I just read a remarkably well written piece.  The substance wasn't important (open table, market power, and restaurant finances).  But I was struck by how well it was written (to be clear, I'm not claiming I have any skills here - I'm not a qualified judge or practioner).

So, I was wondering what Pastore's background was.  I could look it up but am too lazy.

cloud computing and iPhone pre-orders

How is cloud computing really supposed to work if Apple can't even get pre-orders to work for iPhone4 - a PLANNED surge for something relatively simple (no streaming, etc.).  If it turns out the problem is simply with the AT&T account confirmation (which it might be), then less of a concern.  But if it is a broader problem, work needs to be done on the cloud.  Or at least Apple's implementation of its cloud efforts.

Separately, I did find out how to order the iPhone.  Although it seems like the ordering process dies midway (after confirming the selection of a phone), the order has actually made it to the shopping cart at this point.  One can't change the account plan but, at worst, this is a one-time $15 cost (or perhaps no cost if one were planning on keeping the unlimited data plan).  So mine is schedule to arrive on Thursday!

iAd

Wow.  Although this was largely expected, it still feels weird to realize that Apple is going to be deeply involved in advertising.  And, it's actually hard to describe their position - I think it is selling advertising space (but, because it is Apple and the tight control that comes along with it), advertising services, and the medium itself.  It is like Panasonic manufacturing the television, owning some (but not all) of the channels, having control over a certain type of channel (those that opt into iAd), helping create/approve the advertising, etc.  It's a very global system and very much shuts google out of advertising on apps that go the iAd route.  And, if built very neatly into the SDK, will be hard to resist simply opting into iAd as a default for occasional developers.  Google will really need to create a drop-in ad system for apps that goes beyond display ads.

Separately, it never occurred to me until two seconds ago with Google's auto-complete, that the "App Store" is two letters away from the "Apple Store".

Internet in Italy

I'm shocked that significant bureaucratic hurdles that de facto make internet video services (such as YouTube) uneconomic would be imposed in Italy, a country whose Prime Minister owns its largest television group.  Shocked.

DirectTV and iPhone

DirecTV should release a (free) app for iPhone (especially the new 3Gs, given the compass) that helps to orient and point the dish. With the tilt sensor, mapping, internet access and now compass, it's the perfect tool (and avoids the "how is the signal now?" shout-a-thon).

Web ≠ Technology

I wonder when the web will no longer be treated as technology. For example, when printing was introduced, it was likely considered "technology" but, at some point, the medium was no longer interesting in and of itself. Right now, changes to facebook's home page are treated as a tech news item. At some point, I assume they will be covered the same way that a change in a newspaper's format is covered. Or, will it be the case that, because the internet permits interaction, the web will never be fixed and so will be fairly treated as technology for years to come?

TiVo this

Why don’t broadcasters include a link on their program websites to “TiVo this”? I understand that they would prefer not to have viewers skip through commercials. But, at the same time, I think they would prefer that: (i) it be their shows that are skipped and (ii) make the televisions automatically tune into the show on the chance that the viewer is watching live. And, perhaps, they could embed in the privacy policy something that allows them to get more finegrained insights into the viewer’s habits (but still not disclosing identity, etc.).

honey pots

How do unprotected PCs get infected by viruses "mere seconds" after being connected to the internet? Are there computers just shooting around the internet looking for open ports? Isn't this flood somewhat obvious (and shouldn't identification of the source allow at least the zombie computer to be disconnected)? And, finally, when my firewall is down for a second (switching, as it often seems to, between Norton and Windows firewall), is my machine getting zapped?

AT&T wi-fi access for iPhone owners

Finally, after several false starts, we get the formal announcement of free wi-fi for iPhone users at AT&T wi-fi hotspots. Justifying AT&T's default hijacking of my wi-fi settings to treat "attwifi" as a trusted network and breaking my 3G connection as I pass five Starbucks on the way to work.

But, of course, it's not all sunshine and light - logging in is a multi-step, daily process so I can't skip from node to node as I walk past the quintet.

Someone needs to write an app that automates the login process ASAP.