Ars Technica has a piece discussing the positive buzz around HD-DVD over Blu-ray. It’s based on an interesting report by a marketing research company and its findings are backed up by actual buying and searching habits of consumers on Amazon and Google.
On the DVD Wars the buzz seems to have translated into a superior performance for HD-DVD. It uses Amazon E-Commerce Service and Google Trends to quickly show which format is winning across a number of different data points. Right now HD-DVD is winning on all fronts. Among the statistics that it compares are: Salesrank of the Top Ten Products, Number of Products that Can Be Shipped, Number of Products that Can Be Purchased, Number in the Top 100/1,000/10, 0000, and Number of Accessories. The site has Amazon affiliate links to the top-selling items and accessories for both formats. Can we say automated money-maker?
Wisely, they have also created site to compare Sirius vs. XM (no clear winner) and Xbox vs. PS3 vs. Wii (XBox is the clear winner and the Wii is on its heals). I expect to see a Zune vs. Ipod (it would be fun to see more of the slaughter), Vista vs. Leopard, and iPhone vs. Blackberry.
Just like Flickr with their Camera Finder, Amazon is just handing over this valuable data. Especially in Amazon’s case, it makes perfect sense. Sites like DVD Wars serve as R&D for their development process in addition to providing an additional sales channel. If they start to drive a lot of sales through these sites I’m sure it will cue Amazon to begin investing similar features for their site.
[I learned about DVD Wars from Jeff Barr’s Ignite presentation]