I’m sorry, this site is very quiet indeed and may be archived soon. For now, here’s two crossposted items from Reeling and Writhing, which is getting all the action while I’m fiddling with some other writing offline. (The laptop purchased for this purpose is named Barry. He’s been a good boy so far.)
First from a couple of weeks back, this, on the part sale of that ubiquitous book of faces:
But who would have thought that social network would have had so much blood in it? 15 billion?? Is Facebook just a big…. blood orange, waiting for an exceptionally large set of choppers?
Analysts said Microsoft paid a steep price on a bet that the three-year-old company would be able to transform itself into a hub for all sorts of Web activity.
The only way this works is if Facebook becomes sort of the users’ operating system on the Internet — everyone logs into Facebook every day to get in contact with their friends and use a multitude of future applications that will be developed for it, said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran.
Facebook, a social network that lets friends share information, allows outside developers to create games and other applications for its site.
The popularity and depth of knowledge Facebook has about its users makes it valuable to companies like Microsoft and Google which want to sell advertising targeted to individual preferences. (Reuters)
And from The Australian, a few days ago – Dymocks is to offer e-books, boosting its catalogue to more than 4.5 million titles. (Its largest store, in George Street, Sydney, can hold about 350,000 hard copy books.)
The e-book project has been in development for two and a half years, with Dymocks management keeping a close eye on what has happened in the music industry and recognising that Internet sales are slowly eating away at shopfront distributors’ figures. At present it is claimed that ‘many…titles would be sold at a discount to their hardcover cousins.’
Update: There is more news on this over at Australian Writers’ Marketplace Online, at their Speakeasy blog – it looks as though Dymocks are claiming a world first on this one.
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