I’d be livid if I were Omaha Steaks.

We’re spending a lot more time tweeting and Facebooking, says Nielsen.

The average social-networking user around the world spent more than five and a half hours on sites like Facebook and Twitter in December, according to data released Monday by Nielsen. That marked an 82 percent jump from December 2008 when Tweeters and Facebookers surfed their favorite sites for around three hours the entire month.

Among all sites and applications on the Net, social networks and blogs proved the most popular in December, followed by online games and instant messaging. Now boasting 206.9 million users, Facebook was the top social-networking site in December, says Nielsen, grabbing 67 percent of social networking users throughout the world.

Among all countries, the United States led the way with the largest number of people checking out social-networking sites at 142.1 million unique visitors. Other countries at the top of the list included Japan with 46.5 million social-network users and Brazil with 31.3 million.

The average user in Australia spent the most time at social-networking sites, almost seven hours for the month. Users in the U.S., U.K., and Italy spent around six hours at their favorite sites.

Social networking activity per country

(Credit: Nielsen)

In December, the average U.S. user spent more than six hours on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Time spent on Facebook in the U.S. rose 200 percent from the same month in 2008, while time on Twitter jumped 368 percent. Among the top five social-networking sites included in Nielsen’s findings, Twitter continued to be the fastest growing, with the number of unique users hitting 18.1 million in December, a rise of 579 percent from December 2008.

(Credit: Nielsen)

This is funny because it’s true.

The holidays were good to Amazon, which just announced fourth quarter 2009 earnings

. Sales were up 42 percent to $9.5 billion in the quarter, and net income shot up 71 percent to $384 million (or 85 cents a share, well above the analyst consensus of 72 cents)

. Free cash flow was up 113 percent to $2.9 billion. For the full year, sales were $24.5 billion, and net income was $902 million.

Amazon highlighted the success of its Kindle in its earning release, which is not surprising given all the comparison to the iPad which Apple announced yesterday. The one quote from CEO Jeff Bezos in the release is about the Kindle: “Millions of people now own Kindles. And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”

Beyond being vague about how many “millions” of people own a Kindle (is it two million or 20 million?), Amazon also mentions that there are now 410,000 books available on the Kindle. The depth and breadth of that catalog is the Kindle’s greatest strength. Amazon also emphasized that its digital books can by synched between its own family of Kindles as well as PCs, “iPhone, iPod touch and soon, Blackberry, Mac and iPad.”

The accounting recognition for the Kindle changed this quarter, with more of the total device price being recognized immediately instead of being deferred. During the conference call there was a mention of $500 million of deferred revenues from shipments from last year which will be apportioned in future quarters. Also asked whether its competitive position has now changed, Amazon emphasized that it will continue to focus on the strength of its existing relationship with publishers and on devices “purpose-built for reading. We believe readers deserve to have a dedicated device with great selection, at a great price.” But other than that would not discuss any competing devices (cough, iPad) or how they might impact the price of the Kindle. Amazon reconfirmed, however, that its Kindle app for the iPhone would be available on the iPad as well

Earnings slides are below:

Request-Webslides_Q409_Final-1

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Amazon

Website:	amazon.com
Location:	Seattle, Washington, United States
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Amazon.com Inc (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of, a very broad range of products, including books, music,… Learn More

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I wouldn’t count the Kindle out yet.

These sales numbers are impressive. I’ve said that Amazon will continue to dominate the book market and that the iPad will corner the periodicals market.

Given these numbers, and the fairly unimpressive book reading capabilities of the iPad, I’m going to stick with that claim for a while.

Interesting little post over at Fast Company about HarperCollins new interactive, social media driven publishing platform aimed at Tweens and Teens.

It will be interesting to track the success of an endeavor such as this–and to see if it actually produces anything remotely akin to literature.

SAN FRANCISCO — With the widely anticipated introduction of a tablet computer at an event here on Wednesday morning, Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past.

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An Apple Store in Chicago. Apple’s anticipated tablet is expected to help media companies charge for their content.

Related

A Playland for Apps in a Tablet World (January 25, 2010)

Laptop Sales Help Apple Top Forecasts (January 26, 2010)

Times Topics: Apple Inc.

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Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Apple makes most of its money selling devices, not content like iPhone apps.

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Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.

People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.

This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs.

Mr. Jobs, the chief executive, made Apple the most important distributor of music by imposing its own will on the music labels, bullying them into accepting Apple’s pricing and other terms. Apple sold lots of music, but the music labels claimed that iTunes had destroyed the concept of the album and damaged their already deteriorating bottom lines.

With the new tablet, media companies could be submitting themselves to similar pricing restrictions and sacrificing their direct relationship with customers to Apple.

For now, at least, the technology and media industries are looking at the brighter side. “Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well,” said a person who has seen the device and is familiar with Apple’s marketing plan for it, but who did not want to be named because talking about it might alienate him from the company. “He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”

Part of the media industry’s high hope for the tablet comes from descriptions of the device from analysts and others who have been briefed on it.

It will run all the applications of the iPhone and iPod Touch, have a persistent wireless connection over 3G cellphone networks and Wi-Fi, and will be built with a 10-inch color display, allowing newspapers, magazines and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye to the design that had grabbed readers in print.

Their optimism for the tablet also stems from consumers’ willingness to spend money using mobile devices. In the last decade, while people downloaded music illegally to their desktop computers, they happily paid small amounts of money on their cellphones to download ring tones and send text messages.

The iPhone has provided further proof that the economics of mobile devices are unique: the Apple App Store is expected to generate an estimated $1.4 billion this year, according to an analysis by Piper Jaffray.

“The iPhone was a harbinger,” said Trip Hawkins, a founder of Electronic Arts and now chief executive of Digital Chocolate, which makes games for cellphones. “When you have a device that is this convenient and fun for consumers to use, you can get a lot more people interested in paying for and engaging with the content. Big media companies should be all over this like a cheap suit.”

Indeed, they already are. The New York Times Company, for example, is developing a version of its newspaper for the tablet, according to a person briefed on the effort, although executives declined to say what sort of deal had been struck.

On Monday, The Times also announced that its media group division had created a new segment for “reader applications,” and named Yasmin Namini, the senior vice president for marketing and circulation, to head it. Executives said the timing was coincidental, prompted not by the Apple device specifically, but by the growing importance to The Times of electronic reading devices in general.

Two magazine publishers, Condé Nast and Time Inc., have also created mockups of their magazines for tablets, even before such devices have hit the market. “Apple upended the smartphone market with the introduction of the iPhone, and it’s likely that they will, if they enter the tablet market, lead the pace there,” said Thomas J. Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast. He said that “2010 is going to be the year of the tablet, and we feel we are in a very good position for it.”

To successfully sell their material on the coming wave of tablets from Apple and other hardware makers like Hewlett-Packard, media companies may first have to adjust other parts of their digital strategies — so consumers don’t simply use the tablet’s browser to get the same content free on the Web.

Such shifts are under way.

In October, The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the News Corporation, began charging for access for certain elements of its iPhone application. Esquire and GQ have taken steps toward charging for digital content, offering iPhone versions of their magazines for $2.99 for each issue.

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Brad Stone reported from San Francisco and Stephanie Clifford from New York. Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting from New York and Brian Stelter from Las Vegas.

Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Technology (1 of 24) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.

I’ve got to think large publishers lose here and big social brands like Seth Godin absolutely win.

Here’s a riddle: How do you make your book a best seller on the Kindle?

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Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times

Two novels by Ms. Johnson. “Scarlett Fever,” the latest in a series for young adults, is due out in hardcover on Feb. 1.

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Answer: Give copies away.

That’s right. More than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge.

Although some of the titles are digital versions of books in the public domain — like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — many are by authors still trying to make a living from their work.

Earlier this week, for example, the No. 1 and 2 spots on Kindle’s best-seller list were taken by “Cape Refuge” and “Southern Storm,” both novels by Terri Blackstock, a writer of Christian thrillers. The Kindle price: $0. Until the end of the month, Ms. Blackstock’s publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is offering readers the opportunity to download the books free to the Kindle or to the Kindle apps on their iPhone or in Windows.

Publishers including Harlequin, Random House and Scholastic are offering free versions of digital books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-retailers, as well as on author Web sites, as a way of allowing readers to try out the work of unfamiliar writers. The hope is that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.

“Giving people a sample is a great way to hook people and encourage them to buy more,” said Suzanne Murphy, group publisher of Scholastic Trade Publishing, which offered free downloads of “Suite Scarlett,” a young-adult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, “Scarlett Fever,” out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list.

The digital giveaways come as publishers are panicking about price pressure on e-books in general. Amazon and other online retailers have set $9.99 as the putative e-book price for new releases and best sellers, and publishers worry that such pricing ultimately creates expectations among consumers that new books are no longer worth, say, $25 (the average list price of a new hardcover), or even $13 (a standard list price for trade paperbacks).

Some publishers have tried to take control of pricing by delaying the publication of certain e-books for several months after the books are made available in hardcover.

Executives at some houses said that given such actions, offering free content amounts to industry hypocrisy.

“At a time when we are resisting the $9.99 price of e-books,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, the publisher of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer, “it is illogical to give books away for free.”

Similarly, a spokesman for Penguin Group USA said: “Penguin has not and does not give away books for free. We feel that the value of the book is too important to do that.”

But some publishers regard free digital books as purely promotional, in the same vein as the free galleys they distribute to booksellers and reviewers to create attention and word-of-mouth buzz for an author.

“Most people purchase stuff because somebody has recommended the title,” said Steve Sammons, executive vice president for consumer engagement at Zondervan.

Neither Amazon nor other e-book retailers make any money on these giveaways either. But it is a way of luring customers to their e-reading devices.

Free e-books are also a way of distinguishing a less-well-known author from the marketing juggernauts of the most popular books.

“You have to show people things because there’s a lot of competition,” said Ms. Johnson, the author of “Suite Scarlett” and seven other books. “If they go into a store, they are going to see 4,000 books with Robert Pattinson’s face on it,” she added, referring to movie-tie-in versions of Ms. Meyer’s “Twilight” series. “Then my book will be buried under them.”

And if a free e-book rises to the top of the Kindle best-seller list — or Barnes & Noble’s ranked list of free e-books — it automatically gives an author more visibility.

“When you push to No. 1 of any best-seller list, that in itself seems to beget publicity,” said Brandilyn Collins, who writes suspense novels with Christian themes and whose novels “Exposure” and “Dark Pursuit” were No. 1 and 2 on the Kindle best-seller list earlier this month and remain in the Top 10 (and are still available free).

Most of the giveaways are of older titles by an author, with the idea that reading them will convert new fans who will go on to buy more recently released books. Even if only a small percentage of those who download a free book end up buying another one, “that’s all found money,” said Steve Oates, vice president for marketing at Bethany House Publishers, a unit of Baker Publishing Group, whose authors Beverly Lewis and Tracie Peterson had free titles on the Kindle best-seller list this week.

Samhain Publishing, a publisher of romance and erotica, has offered a free e-book title every two weeks for more than a year. Christina Brashear, its publisher, said that the giveaways have led to a noticeable bump in sales.

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Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Books (1 of 28) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 23, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

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Kindle Offers 70% Royalty to Book Publishers and Authors

Amazon’s New Deal for Books Doesn’t Affect Magazines and Newspapers

by Henry Blodget
Published: January 20, 2010

You could see this one coming.

Amazon is launching a new “70% royalty option” for the Kindle.

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Under this option, Amazon will pay authors and publishers a royalty of 70% of the list price of Kindle books, which is a far higher per-copy royalty than most authors receive on physical-book sales (including the standard Kindle book royalties). 

This new plan will encourage more authors to “go direct” to Amazon (or at least force their publishers to sell e-books at a substantial discount). This, in turn, will increase the pressure on traditional publishers to cut prices on wholesale Kindle books. And that, in turn, will transform the Kindle business from a big money-loser into a very profitable business for Amazon.

The new royalty plan comes with some strings attached, all of which are designed to further Amazon’s goals here:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99.  This is designed to force a big difference between the physical-book price and the Kindle price, which traditional publishers are currently desperate to avoid (good luck).

• This list price must be at least 20% below the lowest physical list price for the physical book.  Ditto.

• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights. This gets around the typical regional royalty deals, putting pressure on publishers worldwide.

• Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical-book prices.  This one is aimed at other e-readers, a slew of which have recently hit the market.  Want your fat 70% royalty? Then you can’t go cut a sweetheart deal with Barnes & Noble for the Nook.

Silicon Alley Insider Clusterstock Business Insider Slideshows

This looks like a brilliant play from Amazon. E-book prices need to (and should) drop substantially: When the cost of an incremental sale is near zero, publishers have no business charging physical-book prices.

The traditional publishing industry moans that cuts in e-book prices will wipe out what little margin the publishers have left, thus preventing publishers from paying authors big advances and, thus (be afraid! be afraid) result in fewer good books being published.

Hogwash.

As e-book prices drop, unit velocity will increase. If Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail” were priced at, say, $3.99, Sorkin would sell hundreds of thousands more copies than he will at today’s prices ($29.99?). If Sorkin gets 70% of the sales price as a royalty instead of the paltry 10% he might get now, he’ll do fine. He might even have enough left over to pay a publisher a nice fee to package and market the book for him.

This is where the book industry is headed, whether traditional publishers want it to or not.  Amazon’s new plan should help shorten the time it takes to get there. The plan should also solidify Amazon’s already tremendous dominance of the e-book business, of which Kindle has an estimated 90% unit share.

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For more of Henry Blodget’s analysis of digital media, check out Business Insider.

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