Winning formats

[yourlibrarian]

Two stories caught my eye recently, one discussing how MySpace is declining while Facebook use continues to increase. My knee-jerk reaction to the MySpace story was that its users had always skewed young, and were now either using Facebook because it's so ubiquitous on college campuses, or simply wanted to try something new. And while most people are online to at least some degree, it strikes me that college-educated young people are still its heaviest users. I also wondered if Facebook is simply easier to use from mobile phones? Given how visually unfriendly I've always found MySpace on a computer, I have a hard time imagining it's all that phone suitable. I also suspect that whatever the application which demands the least time and commitment is going to get the greatest buy-in, at least in the short term for high volume use. Also important is that MySpace is going to lose a good chunk of revenue from Google soon. How will MySpace monetize itself, especially if use continues to decline?

Another article involved the growth of on-demand publishing. I thought it was interesting to see that on-demand book titles have now outstripped traditionally published titles. Given our current economic climate it hardly seems surprising that bookstores would want to cut down on inventory, and publishers would be acquiring fewer titles. Also not surprising is that many think eBooks are an area of future development, since its sales avoid the problems and costs of distribution associated with print. I do think the whole question of a standalone device for reading is still up in the air. Personally I think the Kindle will only ever be a niche product, but that may depend on how many services get bundled into it. I know of one person who wanted to get one solely for the built-in, low-cost WiFi which has apparently been boosting Sprint's numbers. But it seems like development may be going in the opposite direction as well.

Comments

[shapinglight]

A friend of mine has a sort of e-book reader thing. You can loads hundreds of books onto it and take them with you wherever you go. Much handier than lugging around a lot of bulky paperbacks. I would imagine a time will come when you can just d/l the latest blockbuster to one of these things and there won't be any print copies at all.

[yourlibrarian]

Definitely the way Amazon has set up their Kindle service, you can have most any new titles in digital form for downloading (and thanks to the Kindle reader, can have them read aloud to you as well). I agree it is much more convenient, especially since most of us tend to read a book only once (or, at least, most books only once). The thing is that many people are already using their cell phones or PDAs to read books and other text, so I don't think standalone eReaders are going to have a particularly large market, even if eBooks continue to increase.

[shapinglight]

You think so? Personally, I could never read any kind of text on a mobile phone or PDA. The print is far too small - and surely that would be true for many people.

[yourlibrarian]

I know I certainly wouldn't want to, but then neither would I want to watch video or surf the web on one, yet many people are doing it. There are netbooks now which I think are designed exactly for people who want more comfort in web, video and reading than phones provide, but which can do more than the Kindle. If I was more mobile I think I'd be interested in one of those but as it is, I'm usually working out of the house and travel only a few times a year.