Is Amazon Poised for World Domination?

Amazon is often portrayed in the media as an unstoppable behemoth indiscriminately crushing everything from indie bookstores to big box stores on its way to world domination. But recently more have started to question that narrative. Amazon’s July attempt at entering the smartphone market was a highly-publicized disaster, but critics are pointing to far more […]

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Is Amazon’s eBook Subscription Service a Big Deal?

Last week Amazon launched a subscription service called Kindle Unlimited, immediately dubbed the “Netflix for ebooks” by just about everyone. It costs $9.99 per month to subscribe, which works out to be $120 per year. For that reasonable price you get unlimited access to a library of over 600,000 books as well as around 2,000 audiobooks. That […]

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Amazon, Apple, Google? Which Cloud Music Storage Service Is Best?

Editor’s note: This page was last updated on 9/12/2013. We will continue to update this article as these services change. If there’s something we need to fix or should add, just leave a comment below the post. When you want to listen to digital music, there are two main types of services to choose from. First, […]

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What’s the Business Model of MOOCs Such As Coursera?

The booming popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in 2012 has dramatically changed our ideas about the potential of online education. The New York Times called them “the revolution that has higher education gasping” and the Chronicle added that MOOCs question “the future of teaching” and even “the value of a degree.” What exactly […]

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Dropbox: a Social Web Business Case Study

Note: This is an article in our Social Web Business Case Studies series, a close look at the strategies of innovative companies that are using the tools of the social web to transform their industries. With just about everyone in agreement that the future of computing is “in the cloud,” the personal cloud storage market, […]

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Is Siri a Threat to Google and Search Engines?

With Google’s current dominance over search, it’s natural to speculate about possible threats. Microsoft’s Bing, for one, is investing big time resources in hopes of gaining market share, and up-and-coming services such as DuckDuckGo are also intriguing. But the strongest competitor might not be a traditional search engine at all, but rather a fundamental new […]

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Spotify: a Social Web Business Case Study

Note: This is the first installment of our Social Web Business Case Studies series, a close look at the strategies of innovative companies that are using the tools of the social web to transform their industries. To keep up with new stories, subscribe to our updates. The mission statement on music company Spotify’s website is […]

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Why is the Kindle Fire So Cheap? Thoughts on Amazon’s Strategy

Q: I saw that Amazon’s new tablet computer is being sold for only $199! The iPad 2 starts at $499. How is Amazon able to make their product so much cheaper? Tablet computing is one of the hottest topics today in technology today, and the major companies are jockeying for position as prices fall and […]

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