Amazon

(Work In Progress)

About

Amazon^[1] is an online retailer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Though it began as an online bookseller, it has since expanded to carry millions of different types of items ranging from electronics and video games to apparel, food and toys. As of August 2013, Amazon has 11 localized websites for different countries throughout the world.

History

In 1994, Jeff Bezos^[6] quit his job at a New York City hedge fund and drove cross-country to Washington state to start a retail website, taking advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Quill Corp. v. North Dakota^[7] that declared online retailers did not have to collect sales tax in states where they did not have a physical presence. On his way, he received $300,000 from his parents in Texas and wrote up a business plan for his new venture.^[8] Once he arrived in Bellevue, WA, he began selling books online out of his garage. He initially invited 300 friends and acquaintances to test out the system and the first book (shown below) was sold in July 1995.^[9]

Cloud Hosting

In 2006, Amazon launched a number of web services^[5] including an elastic compute cloud and a file storage service. As of August 2013, a multitude of sites utilize Amazon’s cloud hosting services including Reddit, Netflix and Instagram, In April 2012, Amazon revealed that their cloud hosting powers 1% of the entire internet.^[4] In August 2013, cloud computing research company Gartner estimated the Amazon cloud to be five times larger than their closest competitors.^[10]

Instant Videos

On September 7th, 2006, Amazon launched a streaming video service^[17] in the United States, initially called Unbox. By February 2011, more than 5,000 television shows and movies were made available for members of Amazon Prime. As of March 2013, Digital Trends^[18] found that Amazon offers the cheapest service amongst other streaming providers Hulu and Netflix.

Kindle

On November 19th, 2007, Amazon released its first edition of the Kindle^[11] e-book reader (shown below, left) for $399, boasting 250 MB of memory and the ability to hold approximately 200 non-illustrated books. The entire first run of the product sold out in 5.5 hours^[12] and did not come back in stock until April 2008.^[13] The following year, a second generation of the reader (shown below, center) was released with enough memory for an estimated 1,500 non-illustrated books. Coinciding with its release, author Stephen King made his novella UR (shown below, right) available exclusively through the Kindle Store^[14] and it was downloaded more than 10,000 times within its first month.^[15]

The second generation Kindle had two more models, as well as two international versions, before the third generation was released on July 28th, 2010. By late January 2011, the Kindle library had grown to more than 810,000 and Amazon announced they had been selling 115 Kindle books for every 100 paperbacks.^[16] The fourth generation launched in September 2011, along with an Android-based color screen tablet known as the Kindle Fire. A fifth generation of the standard Kindle was announced on September 2012 before the launch of the Paperwhite in October 2012, with 2GB of storage and 28 hours of battery life.

Kindle Worlds

Kindle Worlds is a self-service publishing platform launched in June 2013 that enables its users to submit original works of fanfiction from a selection of licensed works and franchises, including Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars. In early August 2013, they expanded to add in works inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s novels.^[19] As of August 2013, 160 stories are available for sale in the Kindle Worlds store^[20], including 60 works in The Vampire Diaries world alone.

Fine Art

In August 2013, Amazon launched a fine art marketplace, partnering with more than 150 art galleries in the United States to sell original works. At launch, the portal boasted more than 40,000 works from 4,500 artists^[21], but was initially criticized^[22] by some bloggers who deemed the art overpriced. However, many commenters flocked to the listings, leaving humorous comments^[23] on pieces including a 1868 piece by Claude Monet^[24] and a 1941 Norman Rockwell piece^[25] (shown below).

Highlights

[researching]

Traffic

As of August 2013, Amazon is ranked 6th in the United States on Quantcast^[2], averating 77.2 million unique users per month. On Alexa^[3], Amazon is ranked 5th in the United States and 6th worldwide.