Robert Scoble recorded a 13 minute video laying out his main beefs with Amazon’s new ebook Kindle reader. Most of his points pertained to the Kindle’s poor design (which I agree with). However, one of his points include:
4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.
While the Kindle (and ebook readers in general) is still a very niche product, it is interesting to see that social network sharing via gifts and commodity purchases is becoming seen as a required standard feature for new devices or platforms in this increasingly “socially networked” world. There’s a reason Facebook applications that encourage sending gifts, etc become popular quickly even though they require cash… people like sending gifts.
Look for this trend to continue.
