Quote:
Originally Posted by porkupan
The problem I have is that a dominant ebook and device seller is buying an "independent" book review site. It's a bit like the New York Times selling into one of its investigative reporting subjects. To prop it up. You see the point I am trying to make? Google, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft - I would have been OK with those.
.
.
I hope it's anyone but Yahoo. Yahoo would take a month before filling Wikipedia up with ads and popups, and another half a year before the traffic starts falling off the cliff...
|
None of those seems to have had any interest.
(And don't forget Google is as much an ebook retailer as Amazon. Not as successful but just as interested in pushing their product to all comers. Maybe more precisely because they're not as successful.)
The best non-Amazon fit I could think of myself would've been Facebook but they're more interested in reskinning Android into Windows Phone than hosting literary communities. Because they too are looking to monetize their "membership".
As you said, that's the way of the world. For now.
Change is constant, though.
I'm just not convinced there was a better deal out there for the Goodreads folks *or* the site/community.
And, back to Wiki-speculation: the only credible alternatives I see to yahoo are Google and AOL. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, no?
The thing is, the only product Wikipedia (as a commercial venture) can call its own is its traffic. The eyeballs. They could put up a paywall, trying to sell or license the content but that would be...troubling?
There's not much of a commercial venture there except as what it is: a communal encyclopedia funded by a non-profit. Any other model lands you in ad-land or a crap-storm.