Which day?
by
Albinofrenchy
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· Score: 5, Interesting
From what I've seen, Amazon won't say which day the record was set, or why they won't say which day the record was set. Why the secrecy?
-- "A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Re:Which day?
by
jellomizer
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It could be Friday as well for some reasons...
Most people have that Friday off from work.
After looking at the sores they couldn't find what they wanted.
They found what they wanted and went online to buy it at a better price.
To stuffed with turkey to go out.
Don't like the crowds of Black Friday but still want to finish their shopping early.
Unable to find a parking spot and went home
Finish talking to friends and relatives and have a fresh memory on what they want so you buy as much as you can online then shop later.
Stuck at home to clean after Thanksgiving
Wanted to get the online stuff early before the inventory ran out.
No Car
-- If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Which day?
by
jedidiah
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Your best bet would be the last gauranteed shipping day before xmas. This would cover your "last minute online shoppers". 'Cause after that you don't know if your orders will get to their recipients in time and who really wants that?
It sounds like Amazon was being overly optimistic.
-- A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Which day?
by
furball
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Black Friday was the busiest shopping day of the year. The recent trend has consumers shifting their shopping closer and closer to Christmas. This causes the retails a lot of worry as you can imagine. They can't really plan and respond in such a narrow time frame when 40%+ of their sales happen in such a short time period. Forecasting sales and predicting if you'll meet your Q4 sales (and annual targets) becomes a right utter bitch.
32 items per second? Wow!
by
mOoZik
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't mean to be a KW (Karma Whore), but that is a staggering amount. Looking at it from a geek perspective, their system has to be such to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous surfers and dozens of simultaneous buyers. They clearly have managed to scale-up their operations in such a way that does not negatively impact the operation of their site to the detriment of sales. Way to go, Jeff & Co!
Re:32 items per second? Wow!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I'll let you in on a little secret -
Amazon.com's codebase was C (now most likely migrated to C++, to take advanatge of things lik OOP among other reasons). It consisted of a gazillion modules which compiled to give you ONE BINARY, called obidos - check out the URL then you'll see what I'm saying. This one binary is then tied to Apache, and then fed out to their 500+ webservers. But the beauty of it is there redundancy measures. At any given time there are 3 copies the binary, a, b & c. a = The latest code. b = yesterday's stable build. c = another stable build. In case there's a bug in some build, they simply have to flip the switch to get an up and running site. It was great, but the part that's a BITCH is developing this stuff. Imagine having to re-compile all of Amazon, just to FIX A BLASTED TYPO. Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
Re:32 items per second? Wow!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Here's another secret: Amazon is mostly migrated to a better system, called Gurupa (any page with 'gp/' in it), where thigns are actually modular and more maintainable. Obidos will eventually be removed. The redundancy measures are completely different now too.
(yeah, I know, not actually a secret).
Profitability?
by
jacobcaz
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I wonder what the profit on those 2.8 million items was? It would be interesting to know if it was just a huge pile of loss leaders or bigger ticket items (which might shed some interesting light on the economy and holiday season in general).
I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.
This is great news...maybe. I would just like more context.
iPods lead electronics sales
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"The top selling electronics products were the Apple iPods and a Phillips DVD player. "
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/27/tech/m ai n663270.shtml
Way to go Apple! Flash iPod is coming!
Darn there goes my non-disclosure agreeemnt, oh well I felt like getting sued anyway.:)
Amazon will rule the world.
by
AndreyF
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Not only that, most of the pages on the site are either encrypted or customized (via datamining), or both. I wonder what kind of servers they're running?
Re:Amazon will rule the world.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The customization takes place using "macros" embedded in the HTML/XML of their web pages. These macros are actually C functions, which are called at runtime on the webserver - which runs a single binary called obidos.
Re:Amazon will rule the world.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
That's actually not so true anymore- there new system, gurupta (which you're on when you see "gp" in your path) is taking over from obidos. It's a better architected system.
Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.
I'll bet...
by
Chess_the_cat
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· Score: 1, Interesting
...there are individual Wal-Marts that sell more than 2.8 million units per day.
good
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Good for them. I am not located in the US and I have bought from Amazon for years.
It is the only store that I can buy from without getting into problems with the CC validation using an international credit card not from the US but from a *"third-world country"*.
How to calculate rough per store sales
by
sjbe
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm too lazy to dig through the reports but you can calculate a rough per-store sales number from the financial reports of any of the big retailers. Get a copy of their income statement and the number at the top will be Revenue. (might be called Sales or something else but it's the same number) Dig through a copy of their annual report to find the number of stores the firm has and divide revenue by the number of stores and then divide that by 360 (allowing for holidays) which should give you a rough per-day sales number
If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can get last year's report and find the number of stores and revenue figures for the previous year. This lets you average the current and previous year figures which will give a slightly better estimate. You also should look through the financial statements for non-retail revenues and subtract those from your starting revenue figures. For example if the company has a financing arm, you might want to back those numbers out before starting. Also you need to be careful with companies like WalMart or Dayton-Hudson (Target) or May Company (Famous Barr, Lord & Taylor) since they actually own several different types of stores. You may or may not be able to isolate the number for a given type of store. Please remember however that this number does not represent what any given store is doing, just what the average store within the firm is selling.
How many got their items on time though?
by
Warlock7
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, business is good, but some didn't get their gifts in time for the holidays. This kind of begs the question as to what the percentage of on-time deliveries were. Was this a worldwide issue or was it mainly in the UK only?
And its all in Perl
by
gtoomey
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Amazon uses Perl & the HTML::Mason templating system to process orders.
Red Hat & Amazon
by
wbglinks
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Didn't Amazon save 21 million dollars a year when they switched to Red Hat Linux to run their servers...sounds like it was a good move financially and performance wise.
It's a secret because it's bad for profit!
by
bazily
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Amazon.com strategy: sell everything at a loss and make it up in volume.
Yes, they sold 2.8 million units, but since it was the day after Thanksgiving, I'm sure most of those qualified for free shipping which can't be a good for the bottom line.
So why didn't Amazon make a bigger deal out of it? Because at the end of the quarter someone's going to want see some profit, and that isn't going to happen unless the accountants and marketing people get together.
-- Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
Amazon and the GOP
by
anechoic
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I visited a website shortly before Xmas: BuyBlue http://www.buyblue.org/ which published stats stating that Amazon donated 60% of their political contributions to the GOP. Not that one should base buying decisions on a corporations political contributions alone but it does make one think a little harder about what buying from Amazon really means.
Even if you did base buying decisions on politics
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
...compare this to how much you think the head of a given MegaRetail chain donates to the Republican Party.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've seen, Amazon won't say which day the record was set, or why they won't say which day the record was set. Why the secrecy?
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
I don't mean to be a KW (Karma Whore), but that is a staggering amount. Looking at it from a geek perspective, their system has to be such to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous surfers and dozens of simultaneous buyers. They clearly have managed to scale-up their operations in such a way that does not negatively impact the operation of their site to the detriment of sales. Way to go, Jeff & Co!
A blog like any other.
I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.
This is great news...maybe. I would just like more context.
"The top selling electronics products were the Apple iPods and a Phillips DVD player. "
m ai n663270.shtml
:)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/27/tech/
Way to go Apple! Flash iPod is coming!
Darn there goes my non-disclosure agreeemnt, oh well I felt like getting sued anyway.
Not only that, most of the pages on the site are either encrypted or customized (via datamining), or both. I wonder what kind of servers they're running?
Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.
...there are individual Wal-Marts that sell more than 2.8 million units per day.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Someone's evidently lost their sarcasm detector, or is relatively new to /., because Amazon tried to patent online shopping several years ago.
That is because Companies don't change technolgies on the basis of Merit.
The real story behind Repeat Customers is Vendor Lockins (not to mention "Nobody got fired for buying Oracle" FUD)...
And my Bank's internet banking still uses COBOL and flat file records...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Good for them. I am not located in the US and I have bought from Amazon for years.
It is the only store that I can buy from without getting into problems with the CC validation using an international credit card not from the US but from a *"third-world country"*.
I'm too lazy to dig through the reports but you can calculate a rough per-store sales number from the financial reports of any of the big retailers. Get a copy of their income statement and the number at the top will be Revenue. (might be called Sales or something else but it's the same number) Dig through a copy of their annual report to find the number of stores the firm has and divide revenue by the number of stores and then divide that by 360 (allowing for holidays) which should give you a rough per-day sales number
If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can get last year's report and find the number of stores and revenue figures for the previous year. This lets you average the current and previous year figures which will give a slightly better estimate. You also should look through the financial statements for non-retail revenues and subtract those from your starting revenue figures. For example if the company has a financing arm, you might want to back those numbers out before starting. Also you need to be careful with companies like WalMart or Dayton-Hudson (Target) or May Company (Famous Barr, Lord & Taylor) since they actually own several different types of stores. You may or may not be able to isolate the number for a given type of store. Please remember however that this number does not represent what any given store is doing, just what the average store within the firm is selling.
It seems that Amazon did great business this holiday season, but they also seem to have miseed some delivery dates.
So, business is good, but some didn't get their gifts in time for the holidays. This kind of begs the question as to what the percentage of on-time deliveries were. Was this a worldwide issue or was it mainly in the UK only?
And Perl features in their Hot Jobs too.
Didn't Amazon save 21 million dollars a year when they switched to Red Hat Linux to run their servers...sounds like it was a good move financially and performance wise.
WBG Links
www.wbglinks.net
Yes, they sold 2.8 million units, but since it was the day after Thanksgiving, I'm sure most of those qualified for free shipping which can't be a good for the bottom line.
So why didn't Amazon make a bigger deal out of it? Because at the end of the quarter someone's going to want see some profit, and that isn't going to happen unless the accountants and marketing people get together.
bazily
------------
http://www.gibsoncompany.com/ - Office space for profitable companies!
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
I visited a website shortly before Xmas: BuyBlue http://www.buyblue.org/ which published stats stating that Amazon donated 60% of their political contributions to the GOP. Not that one should base buying decisions on a corporations political contributions alone but it does make one think a little harder about what buying from Amazon really means.
...compare this to how much you think the head of a given MegaRetail chain donates to the Republican Party.
(Hint: Probably a bit more than 60%.)