Amazon Throws LivingSocial A Big Bone - and Throws a Haymaker at Groupon

When I first heard that Amazon & LivingSocial are, in effect, giving away money, the first thought that came to mind was ‘BUBBLE’.

Which may very well be the case, but it’s also a very aggressive and potentially brilliant marketing move. The cost of customer acquisition almost always makes the first sale for any company - particularly in a market as competitive and margin-starved as retail - a money-loser. So why not just be right upfront about it?

Of course it remains to be seen whether this promotion will close the gap between LivingSocial and Groupon, but I suspect it will, at the very least, make a big dent.

LivingSocial will pick up a large batch of new customers today. I expect to be one of them.

Green Jobs - in China

$58.5 million of taxpayer money handed over in 2008

800 layoffs yesterday.

Industrial Policy FTL. Nice ‘investment’ governor.

Amplify’d from www.boston.com

Evergreen Solar Inc., which received $58 million in state aid to open a factory in 2008 at the former military base in Devens, announced today it would shut the plant and let go 800 workers by the end of this quarter.

The company lost $54 million through the first nine months of 2010, and has, since its founding in 1994, accumulated a total deficit of more than $630 million. Last month, it engineered a reverse stock split to maintain capital requirements for the main Nasdaq stock exchange. Before the split, Evergreen’s stock had been trading at about 50 cents.

Evergreen did not say what will happen to the solar-panel assembly work now done at Devens, but the company noted it will continue to operate facilities in China and Michigan.

But it was just a few short years ago the company was a darling in the eyes of the Patrick administration, which offered Evergreen a rich package of grants, land, loans, and other aid - some $76 million in all-to build a new facility at Devens. The company eventually accepted $58.5 million, one of the largest investments Massachusetts has made in a private company.

Patrick came under fire during his re-election campaign for giving so much support for Evergreen. But the administration had repeatedly defended the deal, saying Evergreen has created far more than the 350 jobs it promised in exchange for the public money.

Read more at www.boston.com
 
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fz54pK

Narcissism isn’t a killer app, but curation might be

I’ll fully admit that when I first became aware of Paper.li, I dismissed it. I didn’t see any value in the ‘Chris Selland Daily’ BUT then as I noticed how my friend Barb French uses their product (http://paper.li/bfr3nch/think-influence) I decided to do the same for some of my own curated lists.

Specifically, I built ‘papers’ for:
* Cloud Computing & SaaS - http://paper.li/cselland/clouds-SaaS
* CRM/SCRM & Sales 2.0 - http://paper.li/cselland/crm-scrm-and-sales-2-0
* Investors - http://paper.li/cselland/investors

This was just an experiment, but I find that I do read them - and others have started to as well.

Paper.li is still rough - they particularly need to work on the rather random fashion in which they choose ‘top stories’ - but there’s a germ of an idea there that I’m starting to like.

Congrats on the funding - will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Amplify’d from techcrunch.com

Exclusive - SmallRivers, the Switzerland-based company behind Paper.li, a service that taps social streams from users and turns them into personalized online newspapers, has just raised $2.1 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital and Endeavour Vision.

Paper.li aggregates and filters news from social networks like Twitter and Facebook and turns the incoming content into personalized daily online ‘newspapers’ (examples for ‘Technology’).

Read more at techcrunch.com
 
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fG7NxQ