2009 ended and 2010 began with two huge headlines for the mainstream adoption of Digital and Social Medias, on the back of what I documented last week as what I consider will be looked back on as a landmark case study with Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas Number 1 victory over the X-Factor. I’ll go into some analysis in a moment, but first, here are the headlines:

2009′s end of year news came in the form of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader: on Christmas Day, for the first time ever Amazon sold more e-books for the Kindle than they sold physical books (Amazon.com). Charlie Sorrel, writing in Wired’s article, points out that this surge most likely comes from customers who received the Kindle as a gift, but acknowledges that whilst this doesn’t mean e-books outsold physical books over the Christmas period, “what this still means is that e-books are now mainstream.” Mashable made a similar remark, saying “e-book sales still pale in comparison to the countless paper books that were sold this Christmas season. We do have to give credit where it is due, though; it is another milestone for the constantly-growing e-commerce giant.” Continue reading →