Round up #166: YouTube, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon device deals
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
There are still great deals for the holidays at Amazon
I’m quite impressed with the deals this year at Amazon! It doesn’t feel like there is as much luck to it…while the “competition” is fun, it’s also good not to feel like you have to keep hovering over that Buy button. 😉
We are in Day 4 of
Amazon’s 12 Days of Deals (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
They do theme it (today is “For busy little elves of all ages”), but there are always deals in many categories. At time of writing, there are 167 pages of deals.
For Amazon devices, they are doing some interesting things with refurbs (you can get an Echo “tower”, the big tall one, for $69.99, which they say is 58% off). They are also doing bundles: today, you could do a basic Kindle and a Fire 7 for just $94.99! You can get a Fire TV Stick and an Echo Dot for $59.98 (33% off).
You can sort the deals, not only by price high to low or low to high, but by discount. The highest discount I’m seeing right now? 95%…
Toodle-loo, YouTube
Well, I’ll miss ya, YouTube.
It’s not that YouTube is going out of business, but Google is currently blocking YouTube viewing on the
Echo Show (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
(by the way, I was just speaking with someone at work yesterday, and we agree: the Show is our favorite Alexa device at this point), which they’ve done before. When I tried it just now, I got a message saying that YouTube was not available on that device…even though the Amazon piece of it seemed to launch.
While I did sometimes use the Show to watch YouTube, that’s still probably not that big a market for YouTube.
More important for me, and probably for many people, is that YouTube will not be available on the
Fire TV family (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
starting January 1st, 2018.
That means, pretty much, that I’ll never watch YouTube again…at least while this situation persists.
A Fire TV and a Fire TV Stick are our sources of TV…we have one in the family room, one in the bedroom, and that’s it.
I was watching YouTube quite often in the bedroom (getting ready in the morning), but that will be done.
Oh, wait! I need to rethink this a bit…there are (at this point) some YouTube videos I really want to watch. There are some great creators whose work is available on YouTube. For that matter, one of our dogs has a video on YouTube (“Treadmill, Elf!” at YouTube). I will still have a place I might watch YouTube: in virtual reality on my Samsung Gear. I usually watch Netflix or Hulu (I’m partway through season six catching up on The Walking Dead, for example), but if I heard about a YouTube video I really wanted to see, I could see it there. Random discovery, though? Done.
So, there’s a question here: will people not buy a Fire TV device because it doesn’t have YouTube, or will they stop watching YouTube because it isn’t on Fire TV?
The answer is probably neither.
People will watch YouTube on phones and tablets (hm…will YouTube continue to work on Fire tablets? Stopping that would be hard…the Fire TV needs an app, a tablet doesn’t), and they’ll still buy the relatively inexpensive Fire TVs.
That’s my opinion…here’s another take on it:
The Verge article by Chris Welch
Amazon is also “delisting” new Nest thermostats from Google, and they stopped carrying the Chromecast some time ago.
As some of my readers can guess from how I felt about brick-and-mortar bookstores (I’m a former manager of one) not carrying Amazon published books, I don’t think it’s a good play (on either of their parts). It’s worse on Google’s part, I think…they are choosing not to let their product be available to people, as opposed to Amazon making someone else’s product not available, but it all results in diminishing your customers’ (or potential customers’) experiences.
Barnes & Noble announces financials…and the stock market responds
According to this
Barnes & Noble is down almost 14% in the past five days.
Not coincidentally, that’s since they released their second quarter financial results:
Comparable store sales are down (which they blame in part on no Harry Potter book this year), but perhaps more troubling for their strategy is that non-book categories were also down.
Is this stock market drop a short-term response to a bad quarter because there wasn’t a Potter book?
Um…the stock is down more than 40% year to date, so that’s a no.
Alexa lists have really improved
We use the Alexa lists, and I was very pleased to see really significant improvements to them recently. In one case, they did what I asked (but I’m not saying they did it because I asked it). It’s a simple thing, but they moved the button that deletes all of your completed items. It used to be in the same place as the button that took you to your completed items (so you could, with one tap, put them on the active list again)…therefore, if you tapped twice because you didn’t think it responded the first time, you could accidentally wipe out your history (we did it a couple of times). The new arrangement is much better.
The other thing is that you can create your own lists! We used to just have a shopping list and a to-do list, but I added a separate pharmacy/vet(erinarian) list. My Significant Other really likes having an empty list, and when I put on there a pet med we didn’t need for a month, that wasn’t happening.
The other list we are using right now is a list of “giftees” for the holiday. While we don’t record in it what we got for whom (we do that in a Google doc), it lets us know for whom we still need to shop.
“How’s the book coming, Bufo?”
I am still working on “Because of the Kindle”, and I do intend to finish it…but I’m not quite sure when. I originally wanted it out by the 10th anniversary of the Kindle (back in November), and then I was thinking by December 25th, but it honestly will probably be into next year. It’s just a much bigger project than I originally envisioned…and I started doing some daily things which really take up some time.
I have the Bookish Birthdays, and it can take a half an hour easily to do one. Once I’ve been doing it for a year, that won’t be true, though. 😉 I do get positive response to them.
The other public one is “On this date in geeky history”. That’s tied into The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip. It definitely is building that, which is good, but again, that takes some serious time.
I also have something I’m currently doing just for work (although I do it on my own time), and that may eventually become public, but that takes some time, too.
I totally understand how those have started taking up my time: I teach time management, I’ve taught project management, and I’ve completed my work for a certification as an “Associate Improvement Adviser”. I can objectively say I’m good at it: I can see the results I get when I train other people in it, and measurement is part of all this. However, it reminds me of a quote which is in my book
The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
“Another romantic lunacy. We assume that a personality problem can be liquidated merely through an understanding of it–as though a man could lift a ,mountain once he admitted it was heavy.”
–Dr. Charles “Doc Bedside” Bedecker
Chthon
written by Piers Anthony
🙂
I’m not saying that this a problem. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of not having a traditional publisher: I’m not being pressured to meet a deadline, and therefore put out an dramatically incomplete work.
My apologies to those of you have wonderfully contributed thoughts for the book that it isn’t out as soon as you thought…and that does mean there is still time to share your thoughts with me for possible publication.
The book is in my plans, though!
Would you watch a video on Amazon for a discount?
This
Quartz article by Helen and Dave Edwards
talks about a new patent by Amazon.
The basic idea is that you get to an Amazon product page, and if you watch an advertising video, you get a discount on it.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
People do a form of that now with
Amazon Giveaways (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
One way you can do a giveaway is to have people watch a video (or at least part of it) before they can enter. I’ve done that one myself, so I can tell you for sure that people do it.
Of course, based on an earlier story in this round up, it might not be a YouTube video… 😉
I finally did it…
I’ve never cracked a smartphone screen before, but I finally did it with my Galaxy S7 Edge. We were at the dog park, I was wearing gloves, and I dropped it…face down on to rocks. I can still use it, but I do have hairline cracks when I’m watching VR. We’ll need to replace my SO’s phone soon, due to a life change, but we will instead be replacing two phones. 🙂 Fortunately, there are two for one deals around. It’s also possible I’ll try to replace the screen myself…there are kits for about $40, and while I’m better with software than hardware, I can do some of that. Just don’t ask me to put oil in your car…I literally put washer fluid in the oil once.
What do you think? What is Barnes & Noble’s future? Does the YouTube thing matter to you? How long will it last? Can Amazon develop an alternative to YouTube…or would it be more like Amazon’s traditional publishing, where it has a market niche, but doesn’t threaten the tradpubs (traditional publishers)…or do you think Amazon publishing does threaten them? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.
You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!
Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!
All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!
* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.
I Love My Kindle 
December 6, 2017 at 5:21 pm |
I like watching YouTube on FireTV occasionally and will definitely miss it if/when they pull the plug on the app. But not much. Similarly if it goes away for Fire tablets (I’m not using mine very much lately). It is just a service I don’t spend much time with overall. I imagine the dust up has to do with Google Red subscription service and Amazon not wanting to let it on their platform without getting a cut. Conversely, Amazon Video is still not in Google Play for some reason. I used to think that was Amazon’s choice, but don’t really know what the issue is.
Meanwhile, Amazon Video is finally available on Apple TV, as announced at WWDC earlier this year. So one step forward and one back.
December 11, 2017 at 2:10 pm |
Thanks for writing, Tom!
Yes, the announcement about Apple TV came shortly after my post, I think.
The biggest gap for me right now is not having Prime Video available in VR. I do think they are missing an opportunity there….Hulu and Netflix both have “experiences”, and it does affect what I watch.
As to YouTube, different people use it different ways. I don’t think it’s about Red as much as it is about showing the availability of the next video and ads. Amazon did change it so we saw those things on the Show (a much less satisfying experience, by the way)…
December 6, 2017 at 11:49 pm |
So, Amazon choosing to not carry certain Google products made me think about the “Cake” argument heard yesterday at the supreme Court. Could Google claim they are a protected class, and Amazon is discriminating against them (:grin). I’ve mentioned some of the places where the Echo is sold. Today I noticed it’s available at Home Depot. Echo is everywhere! I guess no more Dr. Who for me 😀
December 11, 2017 at 2:07 pm |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
🙂
Well, protected classes are pretty narrowly defined…and they are, for example, different where I am in California than what they are nationally. I asked my Echo to play the original Doctor Who theme, and it came pretty close with a BBC National Orchestra of Wales version. I would say it had a lot more flavor, and eventually became something very different and orchestral.
I think YouTube will come back to the Echo Show, as Macmillan came back to the Kindle store years ago. However, I am noticing the Echo Show offering me more non-YouTube video as well…