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Ever since its creation Amozon has been a trendsetter in the todays business, not only having put in practice the “long tail” theory but also always being in front line with all the major innovation issues, such as virtualization, intellectual property and now micropayments.

First time I thought Amazon was one of my trendsetters was when one of its business characteristics (the “Long Tail“) assured as business theory thanks to Chris Anderson.
Then I came across “Data mining at Amazon.com“, which changed my way of thinking digital business.
Lately, I recorded:

• “TiVo, Amazon Offer Downloads to TV” (07/07), which showed the attention to online share rather than selling, with a good test with the most innovative actor in modern broadcasting;
• “Amazon to Buy Audiobook Seller for $300 Million” (02/08), which anticipated the one-tear-later revived audiobook business, showing an accurate market protection as well;
• “Microsoft helps Amazon soar in the cloud” (10/08), which confirms the company’s up-to-date technology ambient, anticipating the public adoption of cloud computing;
• “Amazon Snags Gaming Company Reflexive” (10/08), which is another good protection move, in the always exploding game market;
• “SnapTell acquired by Amazon.com subsidiary A9.com” (06/09), which means putting one’s head into the “visual search” and the “mobile application” market at the same time;
• and, finally (at least of what I recorded) “Amazon rolls out mobile app payment service”:

“Online retail giant Amazon.com announced the availability of its Amazon Mobile Payments Service, promising mobile application developers, merchants and distributors tools to process payments from mobile devices and extend Amazon’s 1-Click checkout experience to their customers. Amazon MPS enables Amazon customers to use the existing payment and shipping information in their Amazon.com accounts to make purchases via mobile device–after signing in from an Amazon MPS-enabled handset or app, consumers are automatically equipped to make future purchases. Amazon adds its APIs will enable developers and merchants to extend single or multi-use payment options–moreover, partners who already offer Amazon Payments on their website can add the new mobile payment option without any additional backend technology development.”

Simply taking into consideration what Amazon does is a way to keep oneself always update.
It has an uncommon way to protect its market, not only keeping focused but mainly investing in all the possible innovative niches it bears. That could be very useful for any national player in the book selling market, to follow the emerging trends and avoid the risk to be out thrown by one’s own market.

But it’s facts such as the management of Orwell’s copyright on Kindle showed one of the main reasons Amazon began to sell digital copies of books:

• obviously it’s a way to sell more books;
• obviously it’s a way to sell another “piece of electronics”;
• but it’s also a way to test on the market the “new” way of dealing with copyright issues, which will soon evolve and transform Amazon’s market into “to-be-defined” new business model.

The final move into the micropayment market is “only” a logic consequence.
Many other products sales are starting to become “rentals”. The copyright model is based on “number of uses” of the item. The only way to match the two characteristics is to prepare oneself to “sell the use” of content (which is also a trend in the news sector) and micropayments are the only media one could imagine to complete the circle.

In synthesis, that’s why I wish I could work with Amazon.
It sums up all the issues I love, it’s always anticipating them (in order to buy a company or enter a market one has to imagine it quite some time before), it’s really the best place for me to work now.
I guess I should send them a resume …

As comment to the current update of the “Communication Global Scenario“, I wish to point out how content is over and over the real evolution point of mobile, but there’s no evident and current news that show the real engagement of big players into this market.

Let’s see the latest and less considered news:

• Fox Mobile Distribution Strikes Deal to Integrate Mobile Content on AOL’s Winamp (04/13/09)
• Nokia’s Latest Buy: Mobile Geotargeted Ad Firm (09/13/09)
• MySpace Breaks Into Mobile Ad Market (12/06/08)

Those three news show:

• content players (like Fox) are starting to test their assets on mobile-like platforms, but still without much commitment (Fox and AOL are part of News Corp group);
• mobile hardware payers (like Nokia) are evolving into service companies, which is not a trend but the mere possible way for them to keep their market share;
• distribution payers (like MySpace) are going mobile only because they lost the online advertising train.

My conclusion is that we won’t see a “mobile take-off” unless:

• the public revert from web to mobile at a more speed pace than expected (but that’s not the case in the main trending market – the US – due to too high consumer prices);
• the telecommunication crisis ends before expected (but it has to solve energy and business model’s problems), which could support reversion from land to mobile connection.

As these two conditions are far to become real, even the big players on the market are continuing to test, without any real shake to the current scenario.

A few good friends know that I’ve been on a new revenue models in advertising for at least five years, didn’t find it yet, but sure that it’s over the current “Free, Free+ADs or Fee” models because we’re in the Web 2 context and the value of revenue should be set by the public.A very general reading of latest “Strategies to Fight Ad-sponsored Rivals” by a couple of Harvard Business School’s authors shows a scenario which is not the right one: one model is fighting another.We have to understand that any current model will necessary evolve and only the winning evolution will prevail.IMHO the way to discover which one will be the “winner” starts focusing on the basics. We are now in an era where:

• our public increases in quantity (and it’s not only duplication, as the overall population increased and new areas started to be exposed to communication media);
• those individuals are no more mere passive actors but active ones and the trend (with technology lowering the financial access point to media) is an exponential increase of the the Web 2 attitude.

So the first conclusion could be: the value of our communication is not the number of eyes who see our ad but the number of people that interact with it.The second issue which should be taken into consideration is the ability of measuring any digital activity, made by communicating and made by interacting.I don’t want a “Orwell’s 1984″ world, but I accept that our current technological situation enables us such control.So we can be sure we have the means to determine the “new” value of communication (if we want to).The third issue is the benefits that our public gets from our action.We could measure it summing the value of purchased goods or (and that’s possible: it’s called knowledge evaluation) of acquired knowledge.In the first case we can collect data from a company, in the second case the knowledge value will generate further communication, which will be measured, which will create benefits, which will be measured, which …It’s not a virtuous circle, I think it’s a different way to see the process and, mostly, a more “natural” one, as it consider the way things go in the current system and simply apply a measurement system to them.