Amazon.com has rolled out a free software update for the latest generation of Kindle and Kindle 3G e-readers that adds capabilities requested by users. Among other things, the preview edition of Kindle 3.1 sports Public Notes — a new opt-in feature to let users share their personal book notes and highlights with other Kindle users.
Amazon’s goal is to make Kindle reading activities more socially oriented, which is hardly a new idea. When Barnes & Noble first launched its nook e-reader at the end of 2009, the device’s innovative “loan a book” feature gave readers their first taste of the technology’s socializing potential.
At the time, Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey called the nook’s feature a “huge step in an increasingly important direction for e-readers.” However, Amazon has elected to leverage the popularity of social networking in other ways, such as the introduction of a new “before you go” feature that enables users finishing a new book to share their thoughts about the title with their social-networking contacts on Facebook and Twitter.
Real Page Numbers
In this case, Amazon is following Barnes & Noble’s lead. Launched last November, the nook color sports built-in social features that allow users to link their Twitter, Facebook and Gmail accounts to the device for seamless content sharing, noted Gartner Vice President Al Weiner.
“The device is slightly heavier than the original nook, but still has a portable ‘stick it in your pocket’ feel to it, unlike a larger tablet device,” Weiner wrote in a blog.
Kindle 3.1 also aims to make the e-reading experience more social by generating real book page numbers that match the layout of print-style books. This will let Kindle users easily reference and cite passages during social-networking sessions with friends, family and professional contacts.
Kindle users who manually download the new software preview…