Microsoft’s Erik Jorgensen is corporate vice president for MSN, overseeing one of the largest online portals at a time when Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are competing aggressively for the time and attention of internet users. Jorgensen, also MSN’s chief media and technology officer, discussed the company’s current strategy for MSN — and plans for its future — in a recent interview.

On MSN’s partnerships, such as its arrangement with BermanBraun Interactive on the “Wonderwall” celebrity site: One of the things we’ve learned is that having a different user interface for different topics, different content, is important. It can’t just be one. There’s certainly a role for templates and for getting more standardized as people traverse different categories, but you have to understand which categories fit with which templates… Partnerships work for us. We’re not going to be the creative minds behind all great media. In each market, we’ve got to reach out and have the kind of strong partnerships that allow us to create the kind of content experience that Wonderwall is.

more 
and Small design firm takes on Amazon over Windowshop  

A tiny Bainbridge Island web design firm is taking on ecommerce giant Amazon.com in a trademark dispute involving Amazon’s new “Windowshop” tool.

Geoff Daigle, the owner of Daigle Design, has a trademark for the term “Window Shopping” dating back to 2002 for his firm’s online shopping portal. He’s taken issue with Amazon over its use of the term “Windowshop” for its new experimental online feature that lets people browse products in a moving, three-dimensional grid.

Daigle’s attorney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Amazon, which Amazon’s law firm rejected. So far, the dispute has not gone to court, and it’s not clear if Daigle, who runs Daigle Design with his wife Candace, plans to legally challenge Amazon, the world’s biggest ecommerce company with a market value of $35 billion.

“This would definitely be on Amazon’s radar screen,” said Michael Atkins, a Seattle trademark attorney with Graham & Dunn PC who does not represent Amazon or Daigle. “All companies take allegations of trademark infringement seriously, because it affects how they do business on a day to day basis.”

But Atkins, who blogs at seattletrademarklawyer.com, said it can be challenging for a small firm to mount a legal challenge over a trademark.

“The little company usually doesn’t have the money to duke it out in court with the bigger, more established company. These lawsuits can be very expensive,” potentially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.

Daigle’s attorney sent a letter to Amazon on Feb. 2 of this year, saying the company’s use of “Amazon Windowshop Beta” and the domain name www.windowshop.com violates Daigle’s trademark, and asking Amazon to stop using it. Amazon’s law firm, Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP responded with its own letter March 9, arguing that “window shop” is a generic term and warning that therefore Daigle’s trademark is “vulnerable to cancellation.”

“It was essentially saying, ‘If you mess with us, we will nuke you,’” said Daigle’s attorney, Yale Lewis, of Seattle-based Hendricks & Lewis PLLC.

Lewis, who has represented glass artist Dale Chihuly and singer Courtney Love, declined to say what the Daigles plan to do next but said they are “considering their options.”

Patricia Smith, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com, had no comment on the trademark matter. Susan Natland of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, who responded to Daigle’s original cease-and-desist letter, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Amazon unveiled “Amazon Windowshop” in October 2008. The experimental feature lets people scroll through books, music and other items in 3-D and zoom in on individual products.

Amazon on Jan. 19 filed an application for a trademark of “AMAZONWINDOW SHOP” for a variety of interactive shopping services.

Daigle said his firm’s Window Shopping portal, a bare-bones web site that provides links to other shopping sites, has generated “a small amount of income” but said it’s a “great brand.”

He said his firm has been an Amazon affiliate for many years, linking to Amazon in exchange for a percentage of any resulting sales.

“Even though we’re a small player in their scheme of things,” Daigle said, “it’s not like we’re invisible to them.”

Follow my updates on Twitter.

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

and as frugal as ever?  

It might seem that ecommerce giant Amazon.com had found every possible way of cutting costs. But it turns out those Snickers bars didn’t need to be bathed in light after all.

Workers at one of the company’s fulfillment centers in Kentucky figured out how to save some money on energy bills by unscrewing the light bulbs in their cafeteria’s vending machines — a policy that has since been adopted company-wide.

“Every cafeteria has four or five vending machines. Every vending machine has light bulbs in it to make the advertisement more attractive,” explained Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the company’s recent annual meeting in Seattle. “And so they went around at all of our fulfillment centers and took all the light bulbs out.”

Amazon says the policy saves an estimated $20,000 a year on electricity.

The vending machine initiative is a sign that Amazon — where workers famously had desks made of wooden doors nailed to two-by-fours in the company’s earlier, money-losing days — remans in some ways as cheap as ever, despite being a $33 billion company that is profiting handsomely in the current recession.

From its efforts to squeeze more efficiencies out of its fulfillment centers to its strategy of building a new TV advertising campaign out of amateur customer videos, Amazon is continually looking for ways to do things on the cheap.

But while investors might cheer Amazon’s cost-consciousness, the approach has also left the company open to criticism that it’s stingy, and doesn’t appropriately give back to the community.

To be sure, Amazon does spend heavily in certain areas, including strategic initiatives such as the Kindle electronic reader. But as Bezos’ focus on vending machine lights shows, the company hasn’t stopped looking for ways to shave costs from its core online retail business.

“It’s a high-volume, low-margin business, so any opportunities to cut costs are going to have a positive impact on them,” said Dan Geiman, an analyst covering Amazon for Seattle brokerage McAdams Wright Ragen Inc. “These little things probably do add up.”

Geiman said while cost-cutting is common at many companies today, Amazon’s frugal ways  reflect “more their culture than the immediate economic conditions.”

Amazon has been focusing a lot of efficiency efforts on its network of fulfillment centers, which stock and ship millions of books and other products. Bezos recently spent a week at a fulfillment center in Lexington, Ky., to review the ongoing “kaizen” process designed to improve workplace function and eliminate waste. (Kaizen, which means “continuous improvement” in Japanese, was deployed by Toyota in auto plants during the 1980s.)

Amazon also consolidated parts of its fulfillment network this year, shutting down three centers in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Nevada — the first such closures since 2006.

“Looking at every aspect of the operation has always been Jeff Bezos’ modus operandi,” said Robert Spector, Seattle-based author of “Get Big Fast,” a book about the rise of the e-commerce company. “He understands that all of it eventually shakes out to the bottom line.”

Amazon has found other creative ways to do things on the cheap. The company, which hasn’t done much TV advertising in recent years, this month invited customers to submit 30-second videos about Amazon, which may be used as the basis for a future TV ad campaign.

Essentially, Amazon is applying the “crowdsourcing” concept to TV advertising — collecting content from its vast customer base (much as it does with product reviews) and using that to create ads.

The cost of the customer ad contest to Amazon, compared to what it would spend on a traditional TV ad campaign, is minimal: The company has committed to awarding Amazon gift cards valued at $10,000 to the two winners. Those winners won’t make any additional money if Amazon uses their videos in TV ads, according to the contest rules.

Amazon’s continued frugality is all the more striking given its strong performance so far in the recession. The company reported sharp growth in profit and revenue in the first quarter of 2009, with sales jumping 18 percent to $4.89 billion and net income rising to $177 million, up 24 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

As Amazon’s fortunes soar, the company’s relatively modest record of charitable giving has drawn some unfavorable reviews, with the online magazine Slate this spring dubbing Amazon “The New Scrooge.”

But Spector said Amazon’s philanthropy issues don’t have an impact on the overall business.

“The average consumer, their only contact with Amazon.com is through the website,” he said. If a product “is at a good price and they get it on time and there’s nothing wrong with it, they move on.”

[Flickr photo via Phillie Casablanca]

Follow my updates on Twitter.

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

I Can Has Beer Taste?  

Who knew that funny cat photos could become such a huge cultural phenomenon? But the power of the I Can Has Cheezburger brand was on full display Thursday night at Safeco Field where the Seattle Internet upstart hosted its first night out at the ballpark.

Even Chief Cheezburger Ben Huh — who greeted fans with his iconic bright yellow Cheezburger hat –  was shocked when more than 1,200 people showed up. Now, word is that the San Francisco Giants are interested in holding a similar night at AT&T Park.

LOLcats and baseball — could it be a new American tradition?  Perhaps the only thing better would be LOLcats and beer. But someone’s already thinking about that. 

I spotted this poster in a retail business in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood the other day.

The I Can Has Cheezburger brand certainly is showing up in strange places — and not always in ways that are sanctioned by the company.

But Huh said they have no problem with events like the Phinney Ridge beer fest utilizing the brand.

"We’d love for them to contact us and let us know, but we have no problems with events like this," he said. "More than happy to oblige them."

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow him on Twitter @johnhcook.

READ MORE and COMMENT, more