The World Is Your Oyster

That could be Oyster’s motto- or ‘We are your Oyster’ implying that the possibilites are endless with Oyster, the new books service as discussed by Adrian and others. It basically works by users downloading the iphone application and paying $9.95 a month, which allows access to over 100,000 titles and you don’t have to finish a book before flicking to another. One of the owners, Willem Van Lancker, says that  Oyster’s main goal is to make the process of finding and reading books much easier than it has been in the past, as discussed in Wired’s article.

You don’t have to decide, do I want to spend $12.99 on this single book?

I think this is great as they claim they want to eliminate barriers to accessing desired content.

Ultimately, Oyster isn’t gunning to replace print books. Think of it the same way you approach music: You can buy vinyls of the albums that mean a lot to you, but Spotify and Rdio are far superior for exploring and discovering what you want to listen to next.

I believe that this is true. The article also discusses how, unlike Kindle, for example, Oyster is an open platform, that can allow for networks to be penetrated and enhanced. People can tweet about the book they have used, and link to it on Oyster. This allows networking and hypertext, which benefits the users and also Oyster.