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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#511

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

GraffitiTim wrote: post #413
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point me to another merchant who offered customer-readable customer reviews before Amazon? I'm not saying there isn't one, just that when we were implementing them, I was unaware of any precedents ...

My memory is there were some stores that had "customer reviews" before Amazon, but they were all screened by the company before being published. So every product would only have 5 star reviews. When Amazon came out with real reviews, it seemed crazy to many at the time -- like why would you want to share bad things about your products on your own website? I thought it was awesome.

OK, so now this hinges on the idea that such stores had an online e-commerce-y presence before amzn. Again, I'm not ruling it out, but I don't remember us having any real models for this.

Amazon's customer review system was created as a barrier to entry for competitors, as much as anything else.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#512

Post by GizmoSwan »

nojito wrote: post #400
fugazithehaxoar wrote: post #227

$15 minimum wage is not something to be proud of. That's just over $30k a year. If you know someone that makes that little, you know how personally unsustainable that level of income is.

The median income for the US is 31k.

But how much work is Amazon extracting from them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-...

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#513

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

TuringNYC wrote: post #429
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, AWS was definitely not part of Jeff's early vision. And as many people have said, major credit to Jassy for making it what it is today.

How early do you mean by early? I remember Amazon at campus recruiting (Cornell, 2000) describing something akin to AWS and LoudCloud came up. I asked what business a bookstore had to do with outsourced computing and recall a fair bit of vision even at the time. In light of what we now know, I’m the only one who didn’t have sufficient vision...for not pursuing that job opportunity more seriously.

I was at amazon from 1994-1996. That's what I mean by "early".

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#514

Post by purple_ferret »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name po…

Except Yahoo was already one of the biggest names on the internet and it was a head scratcher to everyone I knew on first hear.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#515

Post by paxys »

chrshawkes wrote: post #395
maverickJ wrote: post #85

Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone. When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders c…

BS dude. He wasn't laughed at. The man went to Princeton. Right next to other billionaires like Andy Florence. His family was rich etc... He was already a millionaire. It's not a rags-to-riches story by any stretch.

He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families. They all have the best need-based scholarship programs in the country.

His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#516

Post by laurent92 »

powersnail wrote: post #426
oblio wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. facebook.com or messenger.com aren't super memorable. Microsoft also made it work by adding something else next to the name. Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Access.

I feel that the importance of optimizing brand name is over-hyped. A lot of it is retrospective reasoning, arguing why such name is good for popularity after the brand becomes popular.

Legend says Steve Jobs told his two cofounders, who were scratching their heads over an innovative name, that if they didn’t find a name within 24hrs he would incorporate as Apple.

Which is good enough and no reason to hold up the whole process for a decent name.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#517

Post by lfowles »

bryanmgreen wrote: post #482
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name po…

Speaking as someone who works for a company called "BoardGameTables.com", we really like our obvious name. Nothing wrong with something broad. We sell more than board game tables, but everything is connected and it gets us a lot of traffic and search juice. With SEO getting so much money and attention dumped into it, the usefulness has kind of come back around for a name like this.

> We sell more than board game tables

Had to check and verify that claim. I'm familiar with the brand in general but had no idea!

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#518

Post by felipelemos »

MisterTea wrote: post #460
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name po…

The irony is domains like books.com sounded like a sure winner but that only works for books. How would Jeff be doing today if he ran books.com and just sold ... books. bookswebservice (BWS) doesn't have that same ring to it.

And you can't have a copyright in that name, specially if you are selling books.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#519

Post by SllX »

megablast wrote: post #459
SllX wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Make your case instead of dropping your groupthink everywhere. Why? And: What is the maximum size a corporation should be allowed to grow? Who gives that permission now?

It’s obvious. Too much power under one non elected person with very few checks. It’s similar to a dictator of a small country, with global scope.

That’s not obvious. They don’t have diplomatic immunity, issue passports or visas, have the power to pass laws, do not have the power to detain, arrest, prosecute, convict, imprison or kill, and they have no military power.

In what way are they like dictatorships by engaging in commercial activities and being worth a large sum of money based on what their shares are bought and sold at?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#520

Post by hinkley »

afavour wrote: post #230
techlatest_net wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.

A/B testing is awesome for first order problems with your web site design. By the time you’re down to third order problems it’s reductive and cynical.

Immoral techniques always find support from amoral tools. Dark patterns are justified by A/B testing. And shitty people.

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