No love for journos in Sun Valley
It all seemed so promising. The first night at the Sun Valley Lodge bar at the annual Allen & Co gathering had been a happy affair for the press corps as they mingled freely with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (that’s him on the right), WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell, Activision’s Bobby Kotick, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Capital Research’s Gordy Crawford, Lachlan Murdoch and Harvey Weinstein, among many others.
But the press corps, lulled into a false sense of bonhomie by the new openness, were in for a big disappointment this morning when they got to the Sun Valley Inn. The organizers have decided that press is no longer allowed to hang around the lobby area to speak with event guests as they leave presentations. It also means many a journalist/blogger here will no longer have a nearby location from which to file stories.
The normally amiable but stern off-duty New York cops who act as security here were asked how reporters were going to be able to power their laptops and write stories. One guard seriously suggested filing stories from the lavatory. I guess that’s one way of expressing his true opinion of journalists.
Hey Woot, its Amazon. You’re rich.
You gotta figure that every web entrepreneur waits (prays!) for a call or email that goes like this: “Hey dinky but popular outfit with a loyal customer base — super-huge company here. We want to buy you and make you rich. Have a nice day.”
Woot.com got a call like that from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com. They announced the deal on Wednesday. It’s speculated that Amazon paid about $110 million for the company that sells only one item per day at discounted prices, until inventory runs out. The next day, it moves on to another item such as you know, a water gun or a home pedicure kit.
Already, Woot is playing a part in the e-book reader price war between Amazon and its Kindle, and Barnes & Noble and its Nook, by selling Kindles cheap. (But sorry, It sold out before many of you woke up.)
The deal opens up a monstrous growth opportunity for the suburban Dallas outfit. But it doesn’t appear to have taken the starch out of the company’s irreverant CEO Matt Rutledge, who told employees that they should continue doing what they do best — whatever that is.
We plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot – with a wall of ideas and a dartboard. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love…
If that doesn’t give you an idea about the kind of shop Amazon is picking up, perhaps the video above — which, ahem, features a rapping monkey puppet — will. Oddly enough, this crazy-like-a-fox energy reminds us of another clip showing a bunch of wacky young Internet entrepreneurs giggling about their startup’s pending acquisition by a super-huge company. That would be when Google bought Youtube. For $1.6 billion. Chad and Steve, yeah they had a nice day.
from Shop Talk:
Bezos and Zappos.com in a garden, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos puts his quirky on in an online introduction geared to employees of Web shoe retailer Zappos.com.
The chief executive of the world's largest online retailer, in an 8 minute YouTube video posted on Zappos' website, told folks he "gets all weak-kneed when I see a customer-obsessed company."
Bezos, wearing a purple-red button-down shirt and standing in a very non-corporate-looking garden under natural light -- which gives the spot a quasi-online video dating feel -- enthuses about Zappos and his excitement over acquiring the zany online shoe company. Amazon announced on Wednesday the approximately $928 million deal, mostly in stock.
The video was included in an online letter posted by Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh to employees, in which he assures staff that the acquisition is amicable and suggests a headline for the deal as "Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree." Readers will remember the next line of that juvenile rhyme is "K-I-S-S-I-N-G." Online video dating moves fast.
Using an easel and a large pad of white paper (uh-oh, vaguely corporate feeling is invading the garden) Bezos explains what he calls the short list of things he learned running Amazon for the past 15 years -- "obsess over customers"; "invent"; and "think long term."
He tells war stories about the early days of his company, some of which are admittedly endearing -- as when he admits that Amazon's first customers were the employees' mothers, or describes a software snafu.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos talks about Kindle 2
Reuters spoke to Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos at the launch of the Kindle 2.
He talked about device’s price, Amazon’s big picture for Kindle, international plans and cannabilization.
Reuters: Has Kindle been a big hit since its debut late in 2007? Jeff Bezos: We had way more demand than we ever expected or even hoped for. which meant that we were sold out during 2 holiday seasons. which is not a good idea – not the plan. we made more than we though we would need and we still sold out. so its a high quality problem in the sense that demand has been very very good.
Reuters: Popular yes, but aren’t digital book sales still a fraction of physical book sales? Bezos: In 14 months, for the 230,000 titles that we have Kindle additions, Kindle unit sales already represent more than 10 percent of Amazon’s total sales in those 230,000 titles. We spent 14 years building our physical books business. And in just 14 months, this is already 10 percent. So we are all very surprised that it is being adopted so quickly.
Reuters: How many Kindle 1′s were sold? Bezos: We are going to stick to our policy of not sharing that.
Reuters: What is the long term goal? Is Kindle going be strictly for text or some kind of wonder gadget that competes with iPods and other multimedia devices? Bezos: We are really focused on making the best purpose-built reading device…for books, magazines and newspapers, blogs. It does have a web browser, so you can surf the web wirelessly. (It has) A basic browser — it doesn’t do flash, for example. So that’s not the focus of the device. That’s not the emphasis of the device. The real focus is reading. Its a device for reading.
Talking further about eBook, it’s a really essential tool for me. But Amazon really work on it because I want eBooks from different sources.
That guard has a good grasp of the concept of “synergy.”