Cashing Out: Week of July 3rd – 9th 2011 in Online Marketing News

Amazon acquires U.K.’s biggest online bookseller

In a deal announced July 5, Amazon has acquired British online book retailer The Book Depository International. With over 6 million titles, and shipping to over 100 countries, the site is the largest online bookseller in the U.K., and has been a major overseas rival of Amazon’s, until now.

Still, the deal has yet to be finalized and its regulatory approval is by no means guaranteed. The Financial Times reported July 6 that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is planning to investigate “whether the planned takeover would distort competition in the online market for books.”

The concern is that, with 70 percent of the online book market in the U.K., its competitors won’t stand a chance. The OFT itself cannot block or reverse the acquisition, but it has the power to refer cases to the Competition Commission, which does hold that authority.

The OFT, which is inviting interested parties to comment on the deal before July 18, will come to a decision by August 30.

The Guardian’s Chally Kacelnik voiced another concern by users of the beloved Book Depository, in regards to Amazon’s past privacy and censorship faux pas.

Patience is a virtue: Google+ tells brands to hold off on creating profiles

“Not so fast” was more or less the message Google sent this week to brands looking to set up an account on Google+.

Launched just last week in limited test form, the new social network has already been jumped on by brands and other entities, but Google says those groups will just have to wait.

“We’re asking people to hold off on using consumer profiles to get a business identity on Google+,” said product manager Christian Oestlien in a video statement July 6. And his blog post the same day explained that the network, as it is now, “is not optimally suited” to the needs of companies.

However, businesses and organizations can look forward to something tailored specifically to them within the next year.

Equivalent to Facebook company pages, Google+’s brand pages will include rich analytics and will connect to other Google products, like AdWords, that are of use to businesses.

“The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” Oestlien writes in his post. If that turns out to be the case, marketers may find it well worth the wait.

Until then, Google is shutting down all non-user profiles, but within the next few months, they will be experimenting with a small group of marketing partners to see how users react to and interact with brands on the network.

Impatient businesses can apply to be part of this test.

Leaked code points to upcoming Facebook music service

Another day, another rumor about Facebook. This time, it’s surrounding a new music service that the network may have in the works.

The speculation began with a July 7 post on software developer Jeff Rose’s blog, Life is a Graph. Apparently, when Rose viewed the code for the desktop program that sets up Facebook’s new video chat feature, he found that, aside from the chat program which the code calls “Peep,” the installer also supported an application unrelated to video chat.

The second application, called “Vibes” seems to have something to do with downloading music:

 if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.peep"))
 return this.window.getMember("VideoChatPlugin");
 if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.vibes")) {
 return this.window.getMember("MusicDownloadDialog");
 }

This isn’t the first mention of a Facebook music service. GigaOM reported in June about a rumored partnership between Facebook and Spotify, the music streaming service. But this is the first time we’ve seen evidence to support the speculation, and theories are beginning to develop.

In a July 8 article, Mashable’s Ben Parr mused about what Facebook might have up its sleeve, including a potential “app for downloading your music and uploading it to the cloud” or the more anticlimactic possibility that it could just be “code that refers to a defunct or discarded product.”

Ad.ly’s back, with social analytics

Ad.ly, the ad network that helps brands promote themselves through celebrity endorsements across social media, launched a new analytics platform July 8.

The new dashboard helps advertisers gauge and manage their audience with demographics, broken down by gender, level of influence, and location as compared to the average audience on Twitter. It also tracks which of your fans have the greatest influence and shows you which other brands or celebrities your fans tend to follow.

For now, the dashboard can be used for Twitter and MySpace, but not for Facebook. That network gave Ad.ly’s paid endorsements the boot in April, saying they violated Facebook’s terms of service.

Netvibes’ debuts new analytics platform

The second big analytics tool to debut this week, Netvibes launched its new platform this week in private beta, with a general release scheduled for late July.

The new Social Pack is designed to work with the existing dashboard, which allowed users to search one topic across a number of sources (like Twitter, videos, feeds and blogs) using keywords.

The strength of the new product lies in its Social Corpus, which lets users control which sources they get data from (among Netvibes’ 200,00 plus apps and feeds.)

And, when used alongside the old dashboard, the platform allows for simultaneous monitoring and analysis. A post on Netvibes’ blog explains:

“With standard monitoring tools, users could gather and read content, but couldn’t automatically analyze them in aggregate. With standard social analytics tools, users could generate high-level reports, but couldn’t directly explore the original content or discover new trends as they emerge.”

The new social pack attempts to remove these limitations.

The product offers more information than many would know what to do with, and, at $15K for setup plus a monthly $2,000, it’s fairly costly. But for bigger brands seeking truly in-depth analytics, Netvibes’ new platform looks like a good bet.

Amazon-owned Quidsi adds online shop Wag.com to ecommerce

July 6, Amazon’s Quidsi launched a new online store as a compliment to their Soap.com and Diapers.com.

Also aimed at young mothers, their new pet supplies shop, Wag.com, shares a checkout with Quidsi’s existing sites so that consumers can buy items from all three sites in a single transaction.

Acquired in November by Amazon for $540 million, Quidsi’s strategy of grouping all its sites into one e-commerce caters well to young mothers who want convenient access to a number of basic goods.

About Emily Wilkinson

Emily Wilkinson is a Montreal writer and editor who recently joined ReveNews.com. Her experience comes largely from her work at print publications like La Scena Musicale, where she alternated between positions as content manager, copy editor and journalist.
She believes in the importance of strong writing, be it in journalism or in other media, like blogging or even social networking. Her prerogative: though language will and ought to evolve, a good writer need never sacrifice the communicative power of text that is written with thought and care, whatever the venue.
Find Emily on Twitter @EditorWilkinson