It’s the Kindle’s first birthday, and, it still hasn’t become the iPod of eBook readers, as some predicted.

Now Silicon Valley Insider’s Dan Frommer is wondering what Amazon can do to turn the Zune into a hit. 

Here’s the answer: the Kindle needs to become a new media device.

The Kindle is a basically an expensive device that lets rich people get access to a store that lets them buy other expensive stuff. 

It’s a solution to a problem that most people don’t have. 

To succeed, Amazon needs to follow the iPod’s example and make the Kindle a new media device, giving you access to a world of Internet content and making it portable. 

When the Kindle was introduced, we said:

Without podcast support, the Kindle will be a relatively boring, closed system, like the first-generation Zunes. It will be a Sony Reader on steroids. An interesting gadget.

If Amazon embraces podcasting, though, the company could quickly establish the Kindle as a new platform for consumption of Internet content. Users would have access to 100,000+ audio podcasts, on all sorts of topics. And because podcasting can be used to deliver all sorts of payloads, such as PDFs, it could be used with the Kindle to let you subscribe to daily news updates, online magazines and other free Web content.

Imagine how much more interesting the Kindle would be if it embraced new media and made it easy to load up with Internet content?