Amazon Prime Air

About

Amazon Prime Air is a future product delivery service using unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver small packages within 30 minutes from a fulfillment center for the online retailer Amazon. After the service was announced in November 2013, it quickly became the subject of numerous parodies online.

Origin

On December 1st, 2013, the Amazon Prime Air drone-based delivery system was announced by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the American television news program 60 Minutes as a service in development which can ship any product weighing five pounds or less to a customer within a 10 mile radius in less than 30 minutes. The same day, the online retailer released a promotional video featuring a drone test flight on YouTube (shown below). In the first 72 hours, the video gained over 7.9 million views and 6,800 comments.

Precursor

On June 3rd, 2013, the Domino’s Pizza restaurant chain released a video showing an unmanned aerial vehicle delivering a pizza to the walkway of a residential home (shown below). In the following six months, the video gathered more than 1.45 million views and 1,200 comments.

Spread

On December 1st, 2013, Redditor suckingalemon posted the Amazon Prime Air promotional video to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it received upwards of 24,100 up votes and 4,000 comments in the next 48 hours. The same day, comedy blogger Tim Siedell^[2] tweeted a “that awkward moment” joke about an Amazon drone, the @AmazonDrone^[3] Twitter feed was launched and several Twitter users posted photoshopped images featuring Amazon drones.

That awkward moment when your Amazon delivery drone just hovers there, waiting for a tip.

— Tim Siedell (@badbanana) December 2, 2013

No, I won't bring you tacos, stop asking.

— Amazon Drone (@AmazonDrone) December 2, 2013

You knew this was coming: Amazon Prime Air Drone Hunt. Playable HTML5 game. https://t.co/gJv22Q4Y4vpic.twitter.com/uu831WHAx6

— Leon Zandman (@leonzandman) December 2, 2013

On December 2nd, the marketing blog HubSpot^[4] published an article about Amazon’s announcement, which accused Prime Air of being an elaborate promotion for the Cyber Monday online sales event. The same day, YouTuber FinalCutKing uploaded a parody video for a service which delivers packages via rockets within five minutes (shown below).

Also on December 2nd, Redditor cheeseypoofs_ftw posted an Insanity Wolf image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[5] subreddit about Amazon using missiles to deliver packages (shown below, left). In the first 24 hours, the post gathered over 1,900 up votes and 20 comments. On December 3rd, Redditor fish500 submitted an image macro to /r/AdviceAnimals,^[6] joking that his cat would destroy drones landing on his property (shown below, right). In the following nine hours, the post accumulated more than 28,500 up votes and 900 comments.

Notable Examples

Tweets

60 Mins devotes show to "concept" that's: 1. Currently illegal 2. Involves sending 1000s of spinning blades thru residential communities

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) December 2, 2013

So many problems with Amazon drones. How will they navigate the various FAA regs, hackers, populated areas, crashes, giants nets, etc.?

— Drones (@drones) December 2, 2013

Bezos news really overshadowed the White House’s announcement that Obamacare insurance cards will be delivered by Segway sometime in 2023.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) December 2, 2013

Driverless trucks unload at warehouses sorted by robots to ship Chinese-made goods by unmanned drones to the last middle class family.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) December 2, 2013

Search Interest

External References