Lynne Kiesling
The January issue of Wired is full of all sorts of interesting articles. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Jeff Bezos, and Glenn Reynolds remarked on the same comment that I found interesting:
Do physical bookstores have anything to offer that Amazon doesn’t?
One thing is face-to-face meetings with authors. And what Howard Schultz at Starbucks likes to call a third place, where people go and sit and spend time. We humans are a gregarious species; we like to mingle with other humans.
The other interesting articles are the two companion pieces about peer-to-peer video networks, “The BitTorrent Effect” and “The Shadow Internet”. I have perused some discussions of these two articles in the past couple of weeks (including one at Volokh that I can’t find because they don’t have a search capability, and I’m fed up with searching within each piece of the archives,grrr!), including this brief mention at Catallarchy. My mind is still putting together some of the pieces of the BitTorrent effect, which is why I haven’t put pen to paper, so to speak. I’d be interested in hearing thoughts on BitTorrent and property rights, so bring ’em on.
The better question is “What does Amazon offer that physical bookstores don’t.”
That will evenutally be a Harvard Business School case study. That questions has yet to be fully and satisfactorily answered. Thats why the brick & mortar versions are still playing catch up to AMZN
Ever try to get technical support or warranty service from Amazon for the electronics they sell?
I am convinced that people shop at Amazon then try to get support from Bricks and Mortar stores.
JBP