Categories
Library Issues

Amazon, Zappos, and Libraries

So yesterday brought the news that Amazon acquired Zappos. For those not familiar, Zappos is a company that sells shoes (primarily, although they now sell other things) and is known for its nearly insane customer service. Seriously, they will do just about anything they can to make sure you’re happy, and are responsible for crazy customer service stories. This story about Zappos sending a woman flowers is maybe my favorite customer service story of all time. My other favorite thing about them is their “Pay new employee to quit” program.

As a result of the acquisition, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released this youtube video

Take a minute, and watch the video…it’s worth it.

So Jeff explains a bit about the deal, and why Zappos and Amazon are a good match. According to Jeff, he only knows these things:

  • Obsess over customers
  • Invent
  • Think Long Term
  • It’s Always Day 1

Why do I mention this on what is ostensibly a blog about library science stuff? Because I feel strongly that our future isn’t in content, really…it’s in services. No one does service better than Zappos. If we take Zappos customer service strategy (do anything to make the customer happy) and the four things that Jeff Bezos knows about running a company, how could we change libraries for the better? What can we do to be the Zappos of information?

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Amazon

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Free!!

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Returning From Ala2009

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
ALA Media

Shenanigans with Shanachies

I got ambushed by the Dutch Boys at the OCLC Blog Salon at ALA Annual 2009. Evidently, so did lots of other people…the video below is the result.

OCLC Blog Salon:Shenanigans with Shanachies from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Conference Gadgets

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
ALA BIGWIG Personal

My ALA Annual 2009

Here’s a short little audio summary of what I’m up to at ALA Annual 2009.

Listen!

Direct link to the AudioBoo, in case you have a problem with the above.

Categories
podcast Podcasts

My ALA Annual 2009

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
Media Music

Happy Fourth of July!

Categories
ALA Media Personal Podcasts

Podcast Experiment

audiobooI discovered an audio tool the other day that was too well done and too interesting not to use in some way. Audioboo is currently an iPhone only audio blogging application that knocked my socks off when I tried it out. You sign up for an account, and download the application from the iTunes store.

Once you have the app installed, you can use it to record up to 5 minutes of audio, title it, tag it, attach a photo, and hit send…up it goes to the Audioboo site, and to your personal page.  If that’s all it gave you, it would still be a great app, but it goes the full 2.0 route and automatically feeds your audio into iTunes podcast store for download via iTunes. It gives you a raw RSS feed which you can do with as you will, and even supports embedding of the “boo” anywhere else on the web. Oh, and of course, it with Twitter for you. Here are my first two tries at playing with this new tool:

Listen!

Listen!

I’m going to play with this a bit at ALA Annual 2009 in Chicago, maybe track some people down and do flash interviews with them. Try and find something interesting to share, and see if this tool answers some questions on making media available to the masses.

So: Keep your eyes on this space, or even better, subscribe to the RSS feed directly. Let me know what you think, and see if this tool gives you another option when it comes to creating and distributing media.