[Quiss]

Hi

Has anyone more info about the upcoming "amazon coin"?

Are we for it? Against it? Opinions? Speculations? Foil hat musings?
http://theweek.com/article/index/239705/amazon-coins-the-online-retailers-brilliant-first-stab-at-digital-currency

 

[SEAN H. ROBERTSON]

Hi

Has anyone more info about the upcoming "amazon coin"?

Are we for it? Against it? Opinions? Speculations? Foil hat musings?
http://theweek.com/article/index/239705/amazon-coins-the-online-retailers-brilliant-first-stab-at-digital-currency

Interesting article. Not sure how this idea will hit PAYDIRT. We shall see.

 

[Jan Strnad]

We've needed a micropay system for some time. I'd be more likely to purchase a short story, say, for a quarter than for $.99. I'd be more likely to post them, also, if I could limit the price. If Amazon coins in some way address the micropay challenge, I'd be happy.

 

[Zoe Cannon]

Enh. I've seen other places use similar systems, and I've never liked it. (My favorite stock photo site is going credits-only soon - boo!) You have to buy a certain number of credits/coins/whatever at a time, and it's never the exact amount of whatever you want to buy, so you always have a few left over. I don't see what the advantage is, unless they're planning to make things cheaper if you buy with Amazon coins. (So, for example, a 2.99 ebook might cost 2.50 worth of coins.) But Amazon would lose a lot of money that way, so I don't think they'd go that route. So what reason would I have to want to buy Amazon coins instead of just using my credit card?

 

[Quiss]

So what reason would I have to want to buy Amazon coins instead of just using my credit card?

True, that. I think initially they are using these only for Kindle apps, not books and music. But if it works for them, why wouldn't they expand it to anything that'll load up on a kindle.
The only way I'd be interested in these coins would be if you can earn them like frequent flyer miles.

 

[cheriereich]

Huh. Hadn't heard about Amazon coins before the article. It'll be interesting to see how they work out.

The only way I'd be interested in these coins would be if you can earn them like frequent flyer miles.

Now this ^^^ would be a good thing.

 

[Gertie Kindle]

Virtual money. It was only a matter of time.

 

[dalya]

HORRIBLE.

This is dark design. Anything designed to confuse the consumer about the true cost of something is just wrong.

That being said, I love our dark prawn lord Amazon, so I'm sure everything is on the up and up.

 

[kea]

Sounds like another thing I can accidentally click on (like on my kindle when I double click on a book by accident and suddenly I've bought it.)

But, yes ... being able to collect them like frequent flyer miles might be incentive.

 

[B. Justin Shier]

Maybe the Davids will be featured on one.

B.

 

[jvin248]

.
In an environment where Amazon is trying to get to a "half-click purchase" speed to attempt introducing a multi-step process of buying tokens keeping them and disposing of them? Difficult rumor.
.
Could they be considering allowing bitcoin as an additional alternate payment method? More likely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
.
.

 

[Amanda Brice]

I could see it working well for YA. One of the problems teens have faced with going to ebooks is not having credit cards.

But I agree with Zoe's comment about hating the idea of having to buy credits with stock sites. I always end up with like 3 credits left over and end up buying random photos for the sake of buying random photos. I'll probably use them in my newsletter, but I hate having to over-buy.

 

[Soothesayer]

A central digital currency that is centrally located, and everyone is eventually dependent upon. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Zoe Cannon]

The only way I'd be interested in these coins would be if you can earn them like frequent flyer miles.

If I earned Amazon coins for every purchase I made on Amazon...

...I would never have to pay for another book again.

 

[JRTomlin]

I can't figure out how they're different from gift cards. 

 

[Gertie Kindle]

I can't figure out how they're different from gift cards.

Maybe they're just gift cards fancied up.

 

[A.A]

Hi

Has anyone more info about the upcoming "amazon coin"?

Are we for it? Against it? Opinions? Speculations? Foil hat musings?
http://theweek.com/article/index/239705/amazon-coins-the-online-retailers-brilliant-first-stab-at-digital-currency

I need to see what everyone else here thinks before I know if I am to be outraged, enthused or merely meh....

 

[31842]

Maybe their taking a page out of Xbox's strategy book.  I don't know if they still do it, but there was a currency system there that tied into retailers.  I think my dad bought a TV from Best Buy and when he did that, he got a bunch of "points" for Xbox.  You could then use those points to connect to XBox Gold and stream online content.  If you didn't have the points, you had to pay a subscription fee to stream things like Netflix through your Xbox or connect to multiplayer games (or you could use your points to buy fancy clothes for your avatar and download games and junk).

 

[Fahid]

It's like a money making scheme, if they structure it in such a way that you can only buy a certain number of coins, say in denominations like 500, 1000, 2000 or whatever....than they'll be making more this way or at least the expectation is that it works like debt, but good debt they can use since not every one will use up every coin.

So if 500 coins was equal to $5.00, I end up buying a book for $3.99, I am pretty much forced to buy another pack of 500 coins if I wanted to buy the sequel at the same price...

The real issue here is if this will be worse for authors or better? Maybe that person might buy a 99c book instead...hard to say for now

 

[SBJones]

I don't think this is a good idea.  Amazon is a global retail business, not a video game company trying to survive on micro transactions and dicking customers out of coins/points they can't use.

You can buy Amazon gift cards at every grocery store in America.  Kids w/o credit cards are just fine.