Wow, a few days I received this message on my librarything page:
Hi, Was wondering if you’d be interested in reviewing my new novel and posting your comments here as well as a few other book-related sites. Saw you liked Paris Trout, and thought you might like my novel since it’s also southern and a bit dark (in the same vein as Paris Trout). I could e-mail you the novel in an e-book format if you’d like. Let me know if you’re interested. Here’s a link to a summary in case you’re interested: http://christophertusa.com/blog/?page_id… Thanks, Chris

One of the hardest tasks of book promotions is identifying people who would be sympathetic reviewers for your books. But librarything makes this easy. Suppose you wrote a book in the same vein of Dino Buzzati. You know that Dino Buzatti is underappreciated and you know that Dino Buzatti has a few enthusiastic fans; why not give them a buzz and let them know about your novel?

Of course, maybe Buzatti fans are the types just to read a book and not tell anyone…. Or maybe Buzatti fans can appreciate a good story but cannot   incapable of writing anything nearly as interesting? Just as it is now easier for foot fetish people to find one another on the web, so it will be easier for like-minded literary types to find one another. (Btw, is anyone out there a fan of Felipe Alfau?)
Here we observe an interesting pattern. Books for sale are in print; books for review are in digital form. That is an efficient system (for now at least).

Already, we see the results of Chris Tusa’s efforts: 5 LT reviews, and several book reviews on blogs. …

Last week, a blog post hit Techmeme detailing how Dell had screwed up by not securing Adamo.com for its ultra-thin notebook, which CrunchGear’s John Biggs spotted at SXSW a day before its official release on March 17.

It’s not like they tried: the former owner of the domain name, Tucows subsidiary YummyNames, has no record of ever even being approached for a sale or lease of the internet address. Dell claims they had a broker contact the firm anonymously, who was quickly convinced the price would be too high (yet YummyNames leases domains from $750 per month).

The computer manufacterer instead went with AdamoByDell.com but belatedly realized it wouldn’t be such a terrible idea to own or at least use Adamo.com too. Now they’ve finally made a move and acquired it outright for an undisclosed sum which was probably much higher than what they’d have paid a couple of weeks ago, according to Domain Name Wire. Both domain names now redirect to the product website.

As DNW points out, Apple also purchased the iPhone.com domain name after launching the product, and there are many more historic examples of this. No doubt, companies will keep making mistakes like this in the future as well.  

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, has joined the board of directors of Starbucks, her first public company board position.

Sandberg, who’s generally shy of press (she’s done just one video interview since she joined Facebook a year ago), is going to be getting a lot of credit in the future for driving revenue growth at Facebook. Prior to Facebook she was the VP Online Operations and Sales at Google and one of their first 300 employees. She was also previously with McKinsey & Company, the Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton, and an economist with the World Bank where she worked on eradicating leprosy in India. And she’s not yet 40.

The Starbucks job comes with a $280,000 annual salary. But, absurdly, the job doesn’t get her free coffee.    

Earlier this week YouTube launched a new feature for non-profit organizations called “Call to Action”, allowing these organizations to place special overlay ads on their videos free of charge. These overlays can direct viewers to the non-profits’ homepage, where users can elect to donate money, sign up for mailing lists, and interact with other members in the community. And unlike typical ads on YouTube (which video uploaders don’t generally have control over), non-profits can specifiy exactly which page they’d like to redirect to.

To pilot test the feature, YouTube placed a video supporting charity:water on its homepage last Sunday, featuring an overlay encouraging YouTube users to donate money to the cause. In that one day, charity:water received a whopping $10,000 from YouTube viewers. Granted, the fact that the video was featured on the homepage clearly had a huge impact on the turnout, but the success of the new Call-to-Action ads is likely going to be a boon for many non-profits.

Also worth noting is that this is another step in YouTube’s shift towards allowing major YouTube partners to place their own ads on the content they own (before now ads have typically been contextual and sold and served by YouTube). In January we reported that YouTube was quietly rolling the feature out to major content partners, and it wouldn’t be surprising if YouTube extends the powerful feature beyond brands and charities to start including celebrities and politicians, too.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Knowing what the customer wants—even before they do.
Amazon and Netflix were pioneers in building recommendation engines, and they used the systems they developed to become leaders in their respective categories.

Until recently only large retailers had the money, expertise and time to develop the complex algorithms that drive personalized product recommendation systems. But the market has advanced and a number of vendors have proven they can deliver real customer value. Now the technology is affordable to even small retailers.

Yet, according to Vovici, only slightly more than one-fourth (27.6%) of online retailers offer any type of personalized product recommendations.

But that proportion could be changing.

“A growing number of success stories is spurring online retailers to jump on board,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst. “Zappos.com, for example, currently uses a low-tech solution to offer personalized recommendations on only some product pages, but its recent expansion into product categories beyond shoes may be just the impetus needed to push the retailer over the hump.”

Brian Kalma, director of user experience at Zappos.com, said the retailer’s goal is to roll out recommendations on a massive scale with a powerful engine at the center: “Hopefully one day our search engine will become so effective that it could replace what we are currently calling a recommendation engine.”

“Even though automated recommendation systems are rapidly improving, there are situations where peer recommendations provide more meaningful results,” says Mr. Grau. “Take for example a woman who has just moved to Manhattan and needs help choosing and purchasing appropriate business attire. An automated recommendation system would be challenged to find suitable suggestions based on her historical shopping data. A better source of apparel advice would be other professionals working in New York.”

Peer recommendations are most commonly shared on shopping-oriented social networks such as Kaboodle, ThisNext and StyleHop. While these social shopping sites are very much a work in progress, their popularity is growing.

“Retailers like personalized product recommendations because they create cross-sell and upsell opportunities,” says Mr. Grau. “They also cite long-term benefits such as a higher degree of customer engagement and loyalty.”

Despite low adoption rates, 40% of online merchants surveyed by Internet Retailer said they planned to add personalized product recommendations to their Websites by the end of 2008—second in priority to video functionality.

“Despite being around for 10 years, the personalized product recommendation market is still in its nascency,” says Mr. Grau.