Barnes & Noble, the proud owners of the highest-rated dedicated e-reader, ever, are giving users even more incentive to pick up a new Nook.
As of this weekend, anyone who walks into a Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar store with a rival e-reader and purchases a new Nook Color or Nook Simple Touch will be given a 2GB microSD card filled with “$315″ worth of free e-books.
A few of the 30 books provided are classics like “Robinson Crusoe” and “Don Quixote” and you can check the full list here: 30 Free Nook books
The Nook Color (more of a tablet than an e-reader, retails for $250 and the brand-new Nook Simple Touch (the highest-rated dedicated e-reader, ever) retails for just $140.
Barnes & Noble is of course hoping that many will show off their old Amazon Kindle and “upgrade” to the Nook Simple, and the cheap promotion should also help drive foot traffic to the struggling stores.
Result for: traffic
Just weeks after it started selling the iPad in brick-and-mortar stores around the nation, AppleInsider is reporting that the large retailer Target is set to start selling the iPhone, as well.
Target has recently begun re-fitting 850 of their outlets with mobile phone centers, and having the iPhone alongside Android and other smartphones would certainly help drive traffic.
The centers are run together with Radio Shack, which provide the system needed for in-store activations on phones that require it.
Target would not confirm the rumor, just saying they have “nothing to announce at this time.”
Apple has made it a priority to offer their products in an increasing amount of retailers, recently offering the iPad tablet in Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy and of course, Target.
Result for: traffic
Hulu, the United States’ long-time second most popular streaming video site saw its viewership nosedive for the month ended June 30th, after comScore changed their measurement methods.
In May, the site had an estimated 44 million viewers, says comScore, with that number falling to 24 million in June.
The giant drop was the largest of any of the top Internet video sites, dropping the site from second to tenth, in terms of online video traffic in the U.S.
While the number drop seems huge, the new numbers mainly underscore a different and lingering problem; the fact that measuring online audiences remains unreliable.
Three companies, ComScore, Nielsen and Quantcast, each measure differently, so numbers may be similar but never equal.
Says one digital media strategist of the difference in numbers, and the overall problem of unreliability: “You would think 15 years on, we would be in a better place. But we’re still talking about fundamental discrepancies in things like page counts.”
