On the heals of another disappointing quarter for Borders came an announcement of the company’s move into the social networking field. The site, Gather, will be an attempt to harness the popular social networking movement and make a sort of online book club. What’s fascinating is that the Gather site will send users to Amazon (Borders online partner) to purchase books.
As Borders examines the sales at Amazon, it will likely find that users are making a good deal of purchased in the marketplace. If this is the case, there may be some hope, that when Borders drops Amazon, there will be room in their website model to make way for their own used marketplace, thereby opening another venue for independent online sellers. Wishful thinking.
Oak Hill Capital Partners recently purchased the New York Times Broadcast Media Group for $575 million. This adds nine network-affiliated TV stations and assets to the company’s investment portfolio. This round of funding for the firm included significant investment from Bill Gates and Phil Knight. Eight months ago, Oak Hill purchased online book marketplace, Alibris for an undisclosed amount.
I am currently testing a Google Adsense revenue sharing model at Book Sale Scout. I always envisioned the site as being a partnership between myself and book sale organizers, as opposed to just offering them exposure while I enjoy all the ad revenues. This new system allows libraries to add in their Adsense publisher’s ID when the register as a sale organizer. When their sale is posted on the site, 100% of Google ad revenue from that page will go into their account. It probably will never be hundreds of dollars, but it all adds up and is pretty neat to boot.
