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Amazon updates Kindle with Facebook, Twitter functionality

By | April 30, 2010, 3:43am PDT

Summary: Facebook is continuing its plan to take over the world not just via the Internet, but one gadget at a time. This time, it’s with the Amazon Kindle, which will get both Facebook and Twitter functionality in the next software update.

Facebook is continuing its plan to take over the world not just via the Internet, but one gadget at a time. This time, it’s with the Amazon Kindle, which will get both Facebook and Twitter functionality in the next software update.

The Kindle software version 2.5 will be released in late May. While there’s no peek at what these apps on the Kindle might look like yet, Facebook and Twitter users will at least be able to share their favorite passages from their latest reads with the world. Or they can share something they find totally ridiculous and absurd, which should be just as fun.

Some of the other features to be included in the next release will be the ability to organize titles into collections, additional font sizes and improved clarity, pan and zoom viewing modes for PDFs, and password protection.

Before it was mainly smartphones that needed to have Facebook and Twitter app support, but with the onset of the iPad, we should be seeing many more social apps headed our way for the Kindle, Nook and other e-readers.

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Facebook, Twitter Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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good idea about facebook
gavin.chan 1st Oct
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Add a USELESS functionality .....
wackoae 30th Apr 2010
... now that makes the single purpose device a much better purchase. NOT!!!
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Too little - too late. Amazon is a sinking ship.
BillDem 30th Apr 2010
Amazon started down the slope of no return when they destroyed a book off of users' devices without warning. That immediately killed any interest I had in their device. With the iPad's arrival, the bells have started tolling for Kindle. The coming gold rush of portable devices is going to be the final nail in the coffin. Amazon should have been improving that device all along rather than sitting idle for years while cashing the big checks. They always competed on price for their books. With ebooks, their pricing advantage is gone. There is no value in buying ebooks from Amazon. They are overpriced with no advantage. Amazon is about to enter the biggest world of hurt.
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Wrong.
wackoae Updated - 30th Apr 2010
If anything, Amazon was smart. Instead of whining about the iPad, they build a very good app (according to pretty much every reviewer) that basically gives the iPad most of the features of the Kindle (only missing eInk which is nothing but a new name for the old LCD technology most of us used in a calculator during the 90's).

The Kindle may be about to become an endangered species. But Amazon will survive, because they adapted and did it at the first sign of trouble.
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eInk = LCD?
yonian Updated - 30th Apr 2010
"eInk which is nothing but a new name for the old LCD technology most of us used in a calculator during the 90's"

Have you actually used a Kindle?

The display is superb for reading text and not remotely like an LCD calculator. There are many things I dislike about the Kindle, but the display is one thing they did get right.
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Ever used a TI calculator from the 90's?
wackoae Updated - 30th Apr 2010
Same display tech, just bigger letters and different/better fonts. Nothing that anybody else couldn't create with the right software.

The only new part is that the display is actually thinner. But is still just plain old B&W LCD technology.
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RE: Amazon updates Kindle with Facebook, Twitter functionality
Outcome 2nd May 2010
Incorrect Wackoae. eInk type displays do not require electricity to keep the image. When the battery dies, the screen stays exactly how it was right before the battery died... LCD screens require energy to KEEP the image the same... therefore when the battery dies on an LCD display, it loses the image.

eInk is exactly that... electronic ink. Electricity causes the dyes and such to reorganize into an image... hence the reason they literally look like a piece of paper... and reflect light like a piece of paper...

Ever seen a Color LCD screen with its backlight off? Looks like crap even in direct lighting... Same look as those old LCD screens used in calculators... eInk looks superb.

Totally different technologies here...
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RE: Amazon updates Kindle with Facebook, Twitter functionality
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good idea about facebook
gavin.chan 1st Oct
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