Group items tagged

"The fact is, there is a very good chance that, last night, Amazon "announced" a service that will never exist in reality. Why did Amazon do that? The answer is free advertising. Even better: free advertising the night before the biggest e-commerce shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday. How much was that free advertising worth? "60 Minutes" gave more than 15 minutes to its Amazon story. A 30-second spot during the 7 p.m. show usually costs just over $100,000. If you figure Amazon got 30 30-second commercials' worth of time, you can estimate that it got about $3 million worth of "earned" media. "

"Bad news for shoppers who rely on web reviews: New research has demolished the illusion that star ratings realistically reflect product quality. "Average user ratings are only slightly better than a coin toss" in helping you make a decision, says Bart de Langhe, who teaches marketing at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His analysis of 1,272 products on Amazon found a "very low correlation" between ratings and quality. One reason for the disconnect: Fake user reviews. To crack down, Amazon has initiated three lawsuits over the past 15 months, most recently targeting companies that sell positive reviews to vendors. Both Amazon and Yelp also say they use algorithms to filter out suspicious posts-although some still slip through, says Boston University's Georgios Zervas, who has studied Yelp user reviews. He estimates that about one in four submitted reviews are fakes. To avoid getting duped, experts suggest a skeptical approach."

"Last year the shop's 27-year-old owner, Gangadhar N., joined thousands of other small Indian retailers in partnering with Amazon.com Inc. While cows and roosters ramble outside on the dirt lane and women walk by with bales of hay balanced on their heads, Gangadhar, who uses only a single letter as his last name as is common in India, displays Amazon's selection to villagers on a smartphone and shows them how to find things and get the best prices. "I'm the person between Amazon and the people who shop online," he says proudly."

Almost 25 years ago, Amazon.com went live and changed the way the world bought books. Today, Amazon ($NASDAQ:AMZN) sells everything from books, to music, to clothes, to household supplies, to flooring.

" One year later, in July 1995, Bezos formally launched Amazon.com, and the rest is history."

this sucks

not funny max

"Amazon has canceled plans to build a second headquarters in New York City, following pushback from residents and local lawmakers who were concerned about what the influx of high-skill, high-paying jobs would do to an area that's already facing fast gentrification."

"When a longtime resident started stealing her neighbors' Amazon packages, she entered a vortex of smart cameras, Nextdoor rants, and cellphone surveillance."

"SALT LAKE CITY - Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, even though he makes $81,840 a year, CNN reports. He's made that salary for the last 10 years, according to CNN. "

"But it wasn't a fluke. That's the problem. In just the past two weeks, the Internet has been told, by sources they trust (and share on Facebook), that a New Jersey waitress was stiffed on tips by an anti-gay family and that Amazon.com was about to launch product-delivering drones. This was just two months after Jimmy Kimmel created a sort of viral ad for his TV show, a video of a "twerk fail" that was reported by multiple TV news channels as real. Or real enough. Hey, it was a video on the Internet! In all three of these cases, readers were pointed to fake stories that were basically PR for successful businesses or-in the New Jersey case-a scam by a waitress whose collegues considered her an inveterate liar. How many news outlets tried to confirm these stories before running them? You don't want to know."

"We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us -- and what we can do in response."

"Amazon and other tech giants have made devices connected to the internet increasingly prevalent. Now is the time to be freaking out about the dangers."

"Ring, an Amazon-owned smart doorbell company, wants to help you and your neighbors gossip about "suspicious activity" on your street with a standalone app called Neighbors. The app, which was introduced in May, encourages people to bring the surveillance state home by uploading video clips and publishing reports about neighborhood activities, which are then broadcast to other users and participating police departments. Ring markets Neighbors as a modern version of an old-school neighborhood watch program, encouraging communities to band together to protect one another and combat crime."

"Retail and Alexa are just the start of the path toward total domination"

"Naturally, they know what you've browsed or bought on their main service. They also know what you've asked Alexa, watched on Prime, and read on your Kindle. They know even more thanks to their ownership of Whole Foods, Ring, Eero, Twitch, Goodreads, IMDB and Audible."

"Building a business is no easy feat. As a two-time entrepreneur, I've experienced the ups and downs of building a company and culture. "

"The most important financial center in the world?  A fabled place of silver spoons and golden parachutes?  A hub of cut-throat capitalism? Or all of the above. Wall Street is many things to many people, and the perception of what it really is depends on who you ask. Although people's views of Wall Street may differ widely, what is beyond dispute is its enduring impact not just on the American economy, but on the global one."