With Amazon opening its 4th book store one has to wonder why is it going against the wave it helped create and that brick & mortar retailers are frantically trying to catch-up of closing their stores and shifting their business on-line. Could it be now that Amazon has wrought almost absolute destruction on brick & mortars it is looking to fill specific voids. Or, if history is any indicator, then perhaps the stores are more of a Trojan Horse. Like its initial foray as an on-line bookstore Amazon has since expanded its product portfolio to include a vast array of items from cloud computing, publishing, mobile devices, content creation and oh yes..selling a wide variety of products on its web-site (not just books) could Amazon actually be looking at these stores as a springboard to launch other businesses (think fee-based wi-fi access, built-in cell towers to create a mobile carrier network, small-biz local cloud storage solutions..etc). Or it could be just one tremendous head-fake. Either way Amazon certainly will be in the heads of rival executives leaving them guessing as to..what..is..next.
http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2017/03/01/inside-amazons-first-brick-and-mortar-bookstore-in.html?ana=e_me_set1&s=newsletter&ed=2017-03-01&u=sAmE2YeVGI6C34B70ph%2FuJp4Bee&t=1488384350&j=77519081
Facebook opened its first volley in the Content Wars (see: Apple vs Amazon vs Netflix vs AT&T/TimeWarner vs Comcast vs Disney vs FOX vs Verizon/Oath). Okay, it wasn’t THAT big of a shot in its bid to broadcast the Indian Premier League (Indian cricket matches) which it lost out to Rupert Murdoch’s Star. What’s interesting to note is that Facebook was looking at live content. Live content, the rule-of-thumb goes, is highly unskippable. Meaning that Consumers will watch the ads for fear of missing something that occurs. Additionally, the content is something that is preferred to be watched in that moment (no one likes to really see a replay of a game or have to avoid ESPN so as not to see the score of a game that they recorded). It also can be cheaper than building content for sitcoms or movies. Could their bid have been a primer for moving in on NFL broadcast rights that come up next year when Verizon’s mobile rights expire?
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