Thanks Amazon!

Looks like Amazon is getting more aggressive with its Cloud Drive further confirming my original post on the subject (and saving me money!)

Hello,

Thanks for your prior purchase of the 200 GB Amazon Cloud Drive storage plan.  Beginning today, all paid Cloud Drive storage plans include unlimited space for MP3 and AAC (.m4a) music files at no extra charge for a limited time.  Learn more here:

http://www.amazon.com/mp3gettingstarted

Because your current plan now includes unlimited space for music, we're refunding the difference between the cost of your original Cloud Drive plan of 200 GB and the cost of a current 20 GB plan ($20), which is the least-expensive Cloud Drive plan that includes unlimited space for music. A refund of $180 will be issued to the card originally used for your Amazon Cloud Drive storage plan. Refunds are typically completed within 10 business days and will appear as a credit on your credit card statement.

We hope to see you again soon!

Sincerely,

The Amazon MP3 Team
http://www.amazon.com/mp3

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

Google +1: Email Contacts Do Not Make A Social Network

In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile." - Google's +1 Overview The first problem with the +1 button is that many people do not have a Google profile. Let's be generous and say that when people realize it's a requirement to use the +1 button, they will immediately set one up just so they can start "+1-ing" all their favorite content. What then? We've heard Mark Zuckerberg rant about how you can't just tack social on to your product. Social must be at its core. Google's latest attempt to break Facebook's hold on the social graph seems destined to fail and prove Mark Zuckerberg correct. The +1 button appears next to every search result on Google, and it's already popping up on many websites. It's easy to use, but for it to have any value you would have to see what your friends have +1'd and vice versa. The whole point is to give a social weight to content that augments Google's search algorithm. So how do you see what your Google friends have +1'd? Let's actually back up from that question to the more important question: What makes someone your "friend" on Google?

On Facebook the concept of a friend is quite easy to grasp (If it weren't, our moms wouldn't be on Facebook). We add friends all the time by exploring and growing our social network on Facebook. We turn friends-of-friends into friends when they share an interesting opinion, post, photo, or status. We also take the time to add people we meet in real life to be friends on Facebook. With Google and +1, your "social network" is everyone in your Google Contacts. Think about that part just for one more second. Google Contacts. When was the last time you added someone to your contact list in Gmail? We rarely add people to these lists, and while many of them might be actual friends, or people we write to regularly, some are just collateral damage from a friend's Reply All, or a guy we sold tickets to off Craigslist five years ago -- much different from a friend whose opinion you want factored into your search results. Even if this were not the case and we did value the opinion of everyones, Google doesn't offer any tool that allows us to explore and grow our network.

One other aspect of +1 that I find quite odd is that you can view someone's activity if they are in your contact list. Unlike Facebook, this is a unidirectional relationship, and unlike Twitter you don't assume people can freely follow your activity. If I added billg@microsoft.com or larry@google.com to my Google Contacts I could become their "+1 stalker".

Many sites owned by content publishers recognize these shortcomings and have very low expectations for the +1 button; however they will be adding the +1 button to their sites anyway. Why? Because it's incredibly easy to add and everyone thinks that someday soon it may affect their Google search ranking.  The cost/benefit analysis on that decision is simple. Devote a tiny amount of real estate to do what everyone else is doing because no one wants to harm their search ranking on the chance that Google includes +1 activity in that calculation. I imagine this will be the driving force behind most sites including the +1 button on their pages, and that Google will succeed in proliferating this product across the web. But do not confuse that for success -- the +1 button has a long way to go before it can deliver on Google's own goals to break Facebook's stranglehold on social.

[Note: This post pre-dated the actual release of the +1 button and was based on my conversation with several Google employees.]

Why I chose Amazon

This weekend I just finished uploading my music collection to my Amazon Cloud Drive. Not only did this take the better part of a month -- the collection eventually weighed in at 100GB -- but I also had to spend a few hours in iTunes making AAC versions of the songs that I had ripped from my old CD collection. (Amazon does not allow upload of the "Apple Lossless" format) Despite the recent news about Apple's forthcoming "iCloud" service, I'm confident that I made the right choice by going with Amazon.

I have always been a music lover, but like most people in their mid-thirties, the music I love most is what I was listening to in my late teens through my twenties. I still seek out new bands, but the core of my music collection is what I was listening to during the times of my life when I was still discovering who I was. The passion I had for going to live shows, reading music blogs like Pitchfork, and rifling through the bins at Other Music is not gone entirely, but it is greatly reduced as the priorities and pressures in my life have shifted. Five years ago I decided to rip my 1,000 or so CDs onto a hard drive, and then pack them up along with the CD player to store at my parent's house. Since then I've downloaded a lot more music from various sources (eMusic, iTunes, etc...), leaving an external hard drive the only place where my music collection exists in its entirety.

Every article I've read about Apple's "iCloud" touts that their service analyzes your music, mirrors it, and makes it available in the "iCloud" application. It eliminates the need to spend all the time uploading your music to anyone's cloud, and I can completely understand why this is a huge bonus for many people. I, however, am looking for not only a cloud-based player for my music collection, but a way to ensure that I will always have this music collection available to me forever. With all my music on Amazon's Cloud I now have enough redundancy between my cloud drive, my primary hard drive and my second hard drive (where I periodically do a backup of the primary) that I feel comfortable knowing I will always have access to the music that was an essential part of my life for so many years.

There are other reasons why I think my choice of Amazon will be proven right over time. Both Apple and Google are going to put out a cloud service that will be part of a larger strategy to drive customers to their own mobile operating systems. This means less across-the-board accessibility. Amazon already has an Android app for their service. And while Apple will never allow an Amazon Music Cloud App in their app store, Amazon recently tweaked their online player to work on an iOS device.

I think it's likely that at some point the idea of music ownership will go the way of physical media. Kids who are just a couple of years away from having a meaningful relationship with music may find that a Facebook music service powered by Spotify or a similar product may satisfy their needs. For someone my age that had a tangible music collection that was such an integral part of their own personal development, Amazon seems like the right choice.

Of course the true test will be if I ever decide it's safe to throw out the boxes of CDs the next time I'm visiting my parents...