e-shipping

All the retailers are trying to become e-tailers so that Amazon doesn’t take all their business from them. They have a very long way to go to get with the program. Amazon has been honing their web presence for 16 years and they have it down to a science — and to putting the customer first. Seems everything they do makes sense. Amazon Prime, for example, is fantastic. Some of the things aspiring e-tailers do make no sense. My wife ordered a pair of gloves for one of our daughters-in-law. The unbreakable product arrived in a box that could have contained a suitcase or a television. The unbreakable unscratchable gloves were surrounded by enough packing material to handle a few table settings worth of dishes. Go figure.

Tags: amazon, e-tailers, online retail, prime shipping

e-Government

e-Government is a really good idea and there are many initiatives underway to make it happen (see Government 2.0). In some respects the U.S. Government has been a model for using the Internet. The IRS e-file program, for example, has been very successful with nearly 99 million individuals filing their federal income tax returns electronically during 2010. Of the 141.5 million returns filed so far this year, almost 70 percent were filed electronically. There are other parts of the government that just don’t seem to get the idea of “electronic”. When I joined the Medicare program a year ago, I signed up for the Easy Pay program where the monthly Medicare premium is deducted automatically from my checking account. I have now changed my bank and so it was necessary to update various parties that either put money in or take money out of my account electronically. Except for Medicare, I was able to update them all online and have the changes take effect within a few days. Medicare said it was easy to change Easy Pay. Just complete an Authorization Agreement for Preauthorized Payments (Standard Form 5510). No problem. Where do I get that form online? Not available online. The authorization agreement may be obtained by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). Upon request, 1-800-MEDICARE will mail a Medicare Easy Pay Packet directly to the beneficiary. The Medicare Easy Pay Packet includes a Medicare Easy Pay brochure, an Authorization Agreement for Preauthorized Payments, instructions for completing the authorization form, and a pre-addressed return envelope. All Authorization Agreements must be signed by the account holder and returned in the pre-addressed envelope to the address specified. Processing of the authorization form may take between 30 and 60 days. I called two weeks ago and still have not received the “packet”. Of bigger concern is that somebody thinks this is ok. Electric utilitiy companies have not always been known as model e-businesses, yet the three that I deal with all have an online application that takes just a minute or two to enter a new routing code and account number. Three to six minutes versus 30 to 60 days is not a small difference. Think of the cost of creating, printing, stuffing, mailing, and processing the contents of the Medicare “packet” compared to the electric company’s few mouse clicks. Think of how many employees have to touch the contents of the package. I am not making a political statement, but it is quite obvious that reducing the cost of government by hundreds of billions or perhaps trillions should not be difficult.

Meanwhile, the post office continues to operate 5,000 or so offices that are unprofitable and deliver mail six days per week. They have seen a huge drop in mail because of Internet applications such as e-file, e-billing, Quicken BillPay, electric and telecommunications companies taking credit cards and sending e-statements, etc. Unforutnately for the post office, they haven’t seen the worst of the dropoff. Netflix now offers unlimited streaming for $7.99 per month. They spend $700 million per year with the post office distributing DVDs. The holloywood producers are fighting a losing battle to protect their old models. The $700 million revenue stream to the post office will go to zero. And then along comes Zumbox.  There is still a lot of mail that gets sent, not invoices, but notices of privacy policies, service updates, account information, etc. Billions of pieces of mail. This mail will soon be going to the cloud — to Zumbox. To get a Zumbox account you sign up and provide your email address and your snailmail address. Zumbox goes to AT&T, Charles Schwab, Comcast, JC Penney, and the rest and gives them the addresses of people who have signed up for Zumbox. The companies then send all their mail to those members to the members mailbox at Zumbox. As a Zumbox user, you just login to the Zumbox website and check your mail. The mailers save a bunch of money, we save time from retrieving, opening, and throwing away the paper mail. Unfortunately, the post office revenue decline accelerates. It will not be too long before the post office will not have any mail to deliver.

Tags: e-billing, e-file, irs, medicare, post office, zumbox

The Great Pay Wall of Slovakia

The first time I visited Slovakia, it was part of the former Communist nation. At the border crossing there were soldiers with machine guns. They rifled through our luggage and put a large mirror under the car to see if were attempting to bring something bad into the country. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and today, according to Business Week,  it is considered to be a high-income advanced economy with one of the fastest growth rates in the European Union A Bloomberg Businessweek story a few days ago described how a Bratislava company is organizing a national pay wall and has signed up the country’s top publications (See Online Media: The Great Pay Wall of Slovakia – BusinessWeek). This seems like a really good idea to me. U.S. publishers should pay attention. I am not suggesting a national paywall, by any means. But how about a business publications paywall, or maybe one for news, or for sports? The publsihers are fighting with Apple, Amazon, and others trying to preserve their models of the past. (I was really pleased to see Netflix stand up to Starz and not cave to the old model). The Slovakia model has subscribers paying roughly $4 per month (or $40 per year) to gain access to nine different publications. Publishers want us to pay $5 per copy for each of their magazines. Not going to happen. How about $5 per month for access to Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Smart Money, and the Harvard Business Review? I think millions would go for it. Nobody will read all the content of all these publications. Some will read all of one of them, others will read a little of each. The publishers will have to face the music at some point (no pun intended) or they will be disintermediated completely. I pay for WSJ and BW because I read them both cover to cover, but I won’t pay for the New York Times. I read the key stories they publish through the NYT blogs. The NYT gets no money from me. However, if there was a news paywall and for $5 per month I could have access to all the major news sources I would consider it. The NYT would get a slice of the $5 based on how many pageviews they got out of the total for the paywall offering. Another way for the NYT to get money from me would be for them to include their business section as part of the business publication paywall. The Slovakians are onto a really good approach. It takes cooperation from competing entities but I don’t see anything other than greed standing in the way. A tech company in Bratislava called Piano set up the infrastructure and promised nine publishers that they would not have to make any capital investment. Piano’s chief executive officer said it took a year of meetings to persuade the nine publications to get on board. Piano takes a 30% commission and the 70% gets split among the nine publishers proportionate to readership. I don’t know how they handled mobile devices, but clearly they should be included as part of the offering. Publishers, network operators, and platform providers including Apple et al want a share of the pie. Whatever they can work out is fine but from a consumer point of view, I think most of us would agree that what we want is simple. Pay once and read anytime, anywhere, on anything for an affordable fee for substantial content.

Tags: bratislava, media, paywall, publishers, slovakia

Amazon Throws Down the Gauntlet

Jim Milliot’s article, Amazon As Publisher, Publishers As E-tailers, opened with the key point that in the rapidly changing publishing industry, the once clear lines between the various parts of the business have become blurred. Last week’s announcements from Amazon and from Bookish–the soon-to-be launched online book platform backed by Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Hachette Book Group–is the start of a major transformation. Amazon’s launch of Montlake Romance brought the company deeper into the publishing business than ever before, while the launch of Bookish gives publishers their first destination site where titles from all publishers will be available for sale.

The tip of the emerging iceberg may be Amazon’s announcement that it had acquired 47 Books from Award-Winning Mystery Author Ed McBain. Amazon Publishing has acquired the publication rights of 35 titles in the 87^th Precinct Series–including “The Con Man” and “The Mugger”–by author Ed McBain. Amazon’s approach is the publish once, and make available for reading in multiple formats — the McBain books will be published by another of Amazon’s genre imprints, the Thomas & Mercer, and will be available in print, digital and audio formats this Fall. A significant element of Amazon’s move is that this is the first time any of these books have been available in digital format.  I have to admit I am not familiar with Ed McBain or his books, but my nephew is. “McBain is a master of the mystery genre and we are thrilled to be able to repackage, publish and promote his unrivalled body of work,” said Philip Patrick, Head of Rights & Licensing, Amazon Publishing. Patrick said that one of the things Amazon Publishing can do is offer signature authors a “new life for great backlist titles.”

I am no expert in publishing by any means, but one thing I am quite certain of is that Amazon’s approach of giving customers the choice of where, when, and how they want to consume content is the right one. Many major companies act as though they control their customers; that they can decide what customers want and what they will pay. Amazon continues to gain market share in e-tailing because they have built their entire business around the concept of walking in the customer’s shoes. Ever hear of someone complaining about Amazon’s web site or customer service? This same philosophy will surely change the game of publishing. The gauntlet has been thrown down.

Tags: 87th precinct, amazon, mcbain, philip patrick, publishing

Conversational Marketing Summit – 2011

Attending conferences is the best way I know of to stay on the edge of what is happening in the world. Reading content on the Web and exchanging messages is vital but there is no substitute for attending a few conferences per year where you can talk to people at meals and breaks plus interact with sponsors and speakers. This was my second year to attend the CM Summit, a conference run by John Battelle. John has a long history in journalism and the media industry and is founder and chairman of Federated Media, an Internet advertising company which appears to be prospering. John brought together a good set of sponsors and 32 excellent speakers.  The conference included news and views from some of the industry leaders in digital marketing. The two days included thought provoking case studies, insights, and conversations with major brand advertisers, agencies, and digital media companies.

The conference started bright and early Monday morning in the Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan.  A full stream of the confeence is available here, but I will touch on a few highlights — mostly things I tweeted about (@johnrpatrick) from the iPad during the conference. Conversational marketing is all about a dialog between consumer, marketer, and publisher.  You could also say it is the new advertising model.  Major brands like American Express, P&G, Sony, Visa, and General Motors all talked about how they are morphing from traditional advertising to developing digital conversations between their brands and consumers via the social media. You could say it is a matter of survival. Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom Mediavest, a multi-billion agency summed it up by saying that “business is not what it was”. She talked about how advertisers are more willing to consider new channels such as content, conversations, and real-time communications between a consumer and a brand. “Everyone will have an IP address”, is the advertiser’s way of saying that they want to connect directly with individual consumers. A lot of the presentations had to do with targetting. Advertisers really want to send a custom advertisement directly to our mobile phones based on the then circumstances of you and their products. I did not hear one of the presenters question whether consumers are happy about that. The privacy issue is getting a lot of attention, as it should. The new phrase is online behavioral advertising (OBA), and a new icon to signify OBA on compliant web sites will provide a link to a page to learn who is targeting you and where data about you is collected. It will also show your cookies and what they contain and enable you to opt out. People want transparent brands that reveal their intentions and actions. OBA will help make that happen.

Rob Cicone from AMEX said that 44% of small businesses use Facebook and 15% use LinkedIn. Your Buzz is a new Amex tool to help small biz manage their presence across all the major social networking tools. Their goal with the free service is to build a relationship with the small business that will eventually lead to the business accepting the Amex card. David Karp, Founder of tumblr, talked about how they have built a place to post things, customize your web page, and build a community. They claim to be the 26th largest web site with 7 billion pageviews per month, 80 million unique visitors per month, and 45,000 new users per day. Facebook has no guarantee to be the biggest and best social media in perpetuity.

A Finnish company called GetJar has an app store for mobile. They said the app industry is $30-50 billion with 50 billion app downloads projected for 2012 and said apps are media, not content. Not sure that is a significant distinction. I do agree with them that apps are in the early stage; like websites 15 years ago. With Apple’s new Lion and iOS 5, they are sure to get the Lion’s share. Adam Bain from Twitter discussed the new deep integration of Twitter with iOS 5, which means you can tweet from within an app. Could be profound. Hope it is not an exclusive arrangement. I have always thought of Twitter as a protocol for the Internet.

Pepsi talked about real-time marketing. Lady gaga walking down street with a Pepsi. Someone at Pepsi notices and minutes later, tens of millns of people see an ad based on a Pepsi tweet. I thought most significant was that Pepsi and GM and the other big brands were represented by young “with it” marketing execs. I am sure they are not the “chief” marketing officers. Some had weird titles like global director of brand awareness and innovation. A mouthful but important that the major companies are trying hard to figure out how to capitalize on the new social media, because it is really big. Guy from Yahoo! wav very bullish. Head of sales for Facebook said that they reach more people everyday than American Idol. They are running 30 billion status updates per year.

The highlight of the conference was William James Adams, Jr.,  better known by his stage name will.i.am or as  a member of the hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas. He had an uncanny saavy about marketing and innovation. I was greatly impressed with his focus on philanthropy and helping inner city kids with education and housing.

Tags: advertising, battelle, black eyed peas, brand, cm summit, conference, database of intentions, digital media, facebook, google, hudson theatre, marketing, social, social media, social networks, tumblr, twitter, will.i.am, yahoo

Unsubscribe

When writing Net Attitude back in the summer of 2001, one of the topics I included was netiquette, a set of social conventions I learned from David Singer and a few other IBMers who were steeped in Internet history.  They taught me to not use ALL CAPS because in the culture of the Internet that meant you were YELLING. They taught me that when using a picture of yourself to make it small. Another dimension of netiquette — unsubscribe — emerged in the mid to late 1990s after web e-commerce was invented.  The concept was and still is very simple. — make it easy for people to unsubscribe to your email list. It may not be immediately intuitive but the rationale is simply that if you make it easy, the person unsubscribing may remember you favorably and come back at some point. Make it difficult and they will definitely remember you and they likely will not come back. That point of no return is where I have reached with drugstore.com.

The health and beauty Internet retailer, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, was launched in February, 1999. One would think by now they would have figured out how to make unsubscribe easy. Perhaps they don’t yet get it that this is important. At the bottom of their email it says “click here to unsubscribe or change your subscription settings”. That is mistake #1 — there should be a link to unsubscribe. Not “unsubscribe and” or “unsubscribe or”. One click on unsubscribe and maybe one more click to confirm and you should be finished. When you click the link at the bottom of the drugstore.com email, you end up at a page that has 9 different things you may be subscribed to. Still no plain old “unsubscribe”. You have to pick what you are subscribed to and then “update”. I have tried it multiple times and I am still getting their mailings. This is the part people do not forget. I will eventually get so annoyed that I will have to find a way to email them — something else drugstore.com makes difficult — and once I finally get off their list I will not return. There are plenty of online merchants that sell what drugstore.com sells.

Smart e-tailers, like amazon.com, make things easy. They know the consumer has a long memory and a short tolerance. They know that their competitor is a mouse click away. Power to the People still prevails on the Internet.

Tags: amazon.com, drugstore.com, e-commerce, netiquette, unsubscribe

Conversational Media Summit – Part 3

The main strategic takeaway for me from the CM Summit was the stark contrast between the two interviews John Batelle had with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Arianna Huffington.

I first met Arthur at a technology conference roughly 10 years ago. He had a big head-start in adapting to the changes from the Internet, he hired some excellent people to work on an Internet strategy, and I was optimistic that the New York Times would be a leader in making the transition to the digital age of publishing. His opening comment at the closing of yesterday’s conference may have proved me wrong. He said that “digital is the future – in the long run.” The addition of the term “in the long run” offers a glimpse of how things may be going in the New York Times transformation.

At the launch of the iPad, the New York Times proudly presented their news app. Of all the more than 100 apps on my iPad, I would have to put it near the bottom. The name of it tells the whole story – Editor’s Choice. If there is one thing we all know about the Web, it is that the long tail prevails. In other words, readers make their own choices as to what they choose to read, and it may be something quite obscure to other readers. The New York Times app includes just a handful of the many stories that they produce. To even consider a name of “Editor’s Choice” is not even close to the way empowered users of the web are thinking. Especially when it comes to news — it is the reader’s choice not the editor’s choice that matters.

Arthur also made it clear in his comments that the follow-on app and web access to New York Times news will require payment — there will be a cap placed on how many New York Times articles can be read before the reader has to pay. Wired Magazine ran a story the next day about the New York Times decision to convince Apple to remove the new Pulse app from the app store. Pulse, developed by two students at Stanford, is one of the best applications on the iPad. It provides a very user-friendly way to read news feeds from multiple sources in a very enjoyable way. The New York Times has concluded that having their news feeds in Pulse is a violation of their policy. This is ironic, since you would think the more readers, the more apps — including the New York Times — the more pageviews, the better, since all of their stories include paid advertising. Also, given that most Times news is available in news feeds, why would someone pay for news through a Times reader when they can get it through a free news reader? One senior Times person told me they are not sure RSS feeds are going to survive. I would say that RSS feeds going away is about as likely as email going away. If you think I am harsh take a look at what Wired had to say about this.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Arianna Huffington as she came on stage for the closing day conversation with John Battelle. I had last seen her during a campaign speech when she was running for governor. She did not strike me at the time as very saavy about business but I was sorely mistaken about that. She has an incredibly diverse background, both politically and career-wise, and I was highly impressed with what she had to say. In fact, her view of the Huffington Post was exhilarating. She described the future of news, whereby their 130 employees, supplemented by 6,000 bloggers, are creating a new “Internet newspaper” online. The bloggers are not random. They have a  process through which the submitters are vetted and in a sense compete to be a HuffPo news provider. Arianna claims the company to be profitable, and I have no doubt that it is, as advertisers are seeking to connect with readers in a rejuvenated way. Her vision of employing and leveraging the social networks was right on as far as I am concerned, and I believe that we will soon see that the Huffington Post exceeds the readership of all the major online news media, perhaps including the New York Times. At 28 million estimated unique monthly visitors, it already exceeds Fox News, Reuters, the LA Times, ABC News, and USA Today.

Based on what the two leaders of these news organizations had to say, my conclusion is that the New York Times will be offering the news model of the past, and the Huffington Post will be offering the news of the future.

Other conference related stories on patrickWeb

Tags: advertising, Arianna, Arianna Huffington, blog, brand, conference, digital media, Huffington Post, HuffPo, IBM, marketing, New York Times, NY Times, nytimes.com, rss, rss reader, social networks, sulzburger

Conversational Media Summit – Part 2

Being a believer in Boxee, I have been following CEO & Co-Founder Avner Ronen for some time. He offered a very clear view of the future of TV. He said the graphical interface we see from our set top boxes is “embarrassing”. What you get on your iPhone and other small devices is actually getting pretty good but the big screens and flat panels in our family rooms have lousy interfaces. He makes the valid point that people have proved they are willing to pay for music — they will pay for Internet video too. We just need those controlling the content to be willing to make content available. Looks to me like traditional TV will be slow to do so and meanwhile many new sources of video are showing up. Revision3 is a good example of an early Internet TV “station” that seems to be doing well. There will be thousands. I thought Avner’s most important point was that the model that needs to evolve is to pay once and watch everywhere. (The same is true for news. It is ridiculous to have to have a Wall Street Journal subscription on your Kindle, another on your iPad, and another on the web).

One of the most knowledgeable people I can think of when it comes to the business models of the Internet is Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley. I remember years ago when she made a very bullish presentation about eBay. This was when all eBay had for sale was baseball cards. People at the conference looked at each other thinking she had gone off the deep end. In fifteen minutes she painted a picture supported by metrics of where things are headed. A few key examples — more smart phones than PCs by 2012, mobile infrastructure now at critical mass, iPad usage more like a PC than a phone, USA now the innovation leader in 3G, bullish on advertising, Amazon growth accelerating, social networking now exceeds email traffic. I would add that the Internet has grown beyond infancy but is still at the early stage.

In addition to the many other excellent speakers and panelists there were two interesting demos by sponsors. First was Stickybits. Their idea is not new but their implementation is timely. Stickybits has a method to attach digital content to real world objects using barcodes. Let’s say you have a motorcycle. You put a stickbits barcode label on it and scan it with the stickbits app on your iPhone. You can then add content — a picture, maintenance records, a story you wrote, music, anything digital. Now you can take the bike to a dealer for maintenance, they can scan the barcode and see all the information on the web site. Or you can scan the barcode on a book and find a review you wrote, someone can scan a code you put on your business card and they can read your resume, scan a for sale flyer and get details on the item, or friends can scan your holiday card and read the annual family letter.

Tags: advertising, barcode, brand, cloud print, conference, digital media, ePrint, HP cloud print, HP ePrint, IBM, marketing, print, social networks, stickbits

Conversational Media Summit – Part 1

Attending conferences is the best way I know of to stay on the edge of what is happening in the world. Reading content on the Web and exchanging emails is vital but there is no substitute for attending a few conferences per year where you can talk to people at meals and breaks plus interact with sponsors and speakers. This was my first year to attend the CM Summit, a conference run by John Battelle. John has a long history in journalism and the media industry and is now founder, chairman, and CEO of Federated Media, an Internet advertising company which appears to be prospering. John brought together a good set of sponsors and 30 excellent speakers.  It promises to be a chance to hear from the leaders of digital marketing for two days of thought provoking case studies, insights, and conversations with major brand advertisers, agencies, and digital media companies.

The conference started bright and early Monday morning at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan.  John kicked off the conference with an excellent overview of where he sees the future. The theme was “Marketing In Real Time” and the basis of the theme is, of course, the rise of mobile platforms. A “rise” may be an understatement when you consider that the iPhone has gone from zero to fifty million in three years, Android from zero to sixty thousand per day in two years, the iPad from zero to two million in sixty days, and the impending launch of thirty or more new tablets. Built on this base is the rise of local platforms. Yelp has seen 10X growth in three years. Foursquare from zero to two million in two years. Google has integrated local, maps, and business directories into “Places” and Facebook and Twittr have built location into their models.

On top of that base we see the emergence of real time platforms that constantly stream signals across the Internet. Twitter users are now generating 65 million tweets per day and Facebook 60 million status updates per day. Google just purchased Invite Media to create real time marketing of advertising slots. All this is enabled by the social platforms — Facebook has grown from 30  million to more than 400 million users in less than four years and Twitter from one million to 125 million in the same time-frame. All this means a lot of data that did not previously exist and it offers an enormous opportunity for the advertisers of the world to reach people in unprecedented ways. John Battelle calls talks about “The Database of Intentions”. It falls into five categories.

The purchase – What I Buy (Amazon, eBay, Walmart)
The Query – What I Want (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
The Social Graph – Who I Am, Who I know (Facebook, myspace, Google)
The Status Update – What I’m Doing (twitter, facebook, Google)
The Check-in – Where I am (foursquare, yelp, Gowalla)

Privacy vs publicy — Who owns all this data?
Open vs closed — Who gets to play and on what terms”
Publishers vs. Marketers vs. Platforms — can they all get along?
Will regulators sleep through all this?

Tags: advertising, amazon, bing, brand, conference, database of intentions, digital media, ebay, facebook, foursquare, google, gowalla, IBM, marketing, myspace, social networks, twitter, walmart.com, yahoo, yelp

Amazon Wireless

Amazon is one of the few web sites that really and totally has their act together. In the Fall of 1995, I made a
presentation in Atlanta to a group of CEOs about the Internet. I showed them various web sites that I was fascinated with at the time, mostly related to engineering, scientific, government and academic projects. The word e-business had not yet been coined by IBM and there were not many exciting business web sites. One that seemed quite novel though was a small site called Amazon.com. I asked for a show of hands from those who had heard of Amazon. Not a single hand went up.

Amazon opened its virtual doors in July 1995 with a mission to “use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible” . During the next few years Amazon became very popular and it was hailed as not only the best web site, but also as the new model of how businesses of all kinds would operate. The stock climbed from obscurity to a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion. When the Internet bubble burst that value went down tremendously and skeptics said it would never get to that level again. It finished today at $55 billion.

Amazon customer service is second to none. In all these years I have never once heard of a disgruntled customer. The company continues to innovate. The Kindle has been a joy. Many of us have talked about wrap rage when it comes to packaging. Amazon is actually doing something about it. Fortunately, Jeff Bezos has small children and has experienced the impossibility of opening toys so he has pressured manufacturers to stop their bad packaging habits and has introduced Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging.

Some years ago I enabled an Amazon Store page here on patrickWeb and writing this story motivated me to spruce it up a bit. Feel free to try it out and please give me any feedback you want. If someone buys from the patrickWeb store, a small commission is generated from Amazon. Over the years it has amounted to roughly $25 per year and more than all of it goes to charity. Not likely I will be a threat to local retailers. I just like the idea of providing a link to an e-business that I think does a really great job for customers.

The newest Amazon innovation is their introduction of AmazonWireless – a new website by Amazon specializing in cell phones and wireless service plans and offering more than 140 bestselling phones from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. As only Amazon can do they will offer truly easy shopping without rebate hassles, and free two-day shipping. They will also make it easy for customers to upgrade their phone if they already have a plan, or if they want to establish new cell phone service, has tried to make it simple to find the right phone, service plan, and options. (Compared to the ineptitude of the carriers this should be easy). With all the familiar Amazon features like bestseller lists, detailed product descriptions, and customer reviews, I have no doubt this new part of Amazon will be a big success.

Tags: amazon, cell phone, Mobile, phones, wireless