In 2001, the folks at Hypergene created a delightful thought piece, Amazoning the news. The presentation demonstrated the potential power in delivering the news with the same interactive threads that Amazon has woven throughout its commerce platform (and it is a platform). I read this piece three years ago, and I still harken back to it occasionally, trying to determine which ideas are most relevant today. (Answer: many of them.) Information presentation as practiced on news sites is shifting and improving, but fits and starts are still the rule.
Yesterday, Amazon introduced A9, its foray into search. Those of us in the interactive content business are still pushing our way through old paradigms. Amazon continues to avoid limiting itself, taking risks in spaces that are not obviously part of their core business of selling things. While they are using Google for some of the search results, I think the more interesting overall picture has Google and Amazon as two true internet platform companies. Operating systems, if you will.
Amazon going into search doesn’t seem that far-fetched, in some ways. They want to fulfill demand… how better to gauge demand than to watch the search traffic, even the supposedly non-commercial traffic. The data flow alone might be worth the expense. While their own site search probably served as a hard-fought proving ground, Amazon hired a search guru nearly 18 months ago, perhaps with this extension in mind.
The real question: will “Amazoning the news” come from… Amazon? Steve Yelvington reminds media companies to pay attention.
Is Amazon a media site or a retailer? The answer is “both.”