Slashdot Mirror
Dropping Profits Sends Amazon In Odd Directions
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a story detailing how Amazon has purchased the rights to turn a recently published book into a feature-length movie. The article also outlines other 'strange directions' Amazon has taken in response to declining profits and a plummeting stock price, including moving into the grocery business and producing original live webcasts and streaming shows."
They probably got him to sign over the rights for nothing and then started pushing the book to set up the movie: Poor guy. Sounds like another Anthony Burgess who sold the rights to make A Clockwork Orange into a movie to The Rolling Stones for around $5,000.
This kind of reminds me of a media outlet gone wrong. Or American Idol informing people of what good music is. You really have to wonder if Amazon found this book and said "this is a really good book" or if they said "find me a book that will translate well to the big screen."
You want to make money? Find an acceptable product or well known name and shove it down America's throat. Instant cash. Examples: Mission Impossible 2, corporate boy bands with music written by teams of people, any media that follows a standard high selling formula, etc. Next up? Amazon studios presents their new movie
In TFA, they even admit it:
My work here is dung.
They could always sell their "one click" technology.
That's weird, my (uninformed) perception was that Amazon had solidified it's place as the king of of the hill and was doing exceedingly well.
Funny how you don't really know who is really succeeding until you look at the bottom line.
Is it possible that the big web 1.0 succeess like Amazon and Ebay might be toppled by some as yet unidentified jauggernaut the way Microsoft toppled WordPerfect and Lotus123 back in the day?
boxlight
At this point I frankly prefer Barnes and Noble to Amazon. B&N has finally caught up with Amazon as far as I can tell in terms of hugeness of inventory for books and DVDs, and all that stuff Amazon sells that isn't books and DVDs... well, who cares? This zshops thing is just a crappy version of eBay, and there are better places to buy used books.
What I've really found that's interesting lately is that if you order from bn.com from inside of a barnes and noble brick and mortar store, they waive shipping. So if I want something, I can stop at a B&N on the way home from work; and if they have the book I want I can go home with it immediately, if they don't have the book I can just ask them to order it from the website and I get it in a few days without even having to pay for shipping. It's kind of the best of both worlds.
Plus Amazon's switched to this MSN Live Search nonsense. What purpose does amazon.com serve at this point except as a repository for politically biased book reviews? As far as I'm concerned, screw 'em.
"Come away, human author, take a venture capitalist by the hand/for the stock market's more full of bullshit than you can understand."
If Amazon wasn't too concern about pursuing profits to please Wall Street, they wouldn't be doing all this weird stuff and have a more predictable business model. Maybe it's time that Amazon accept being a blue chip company like Microsoft instead of a being a king of the jungle wonder stock like Google.
It is inevitable that Amazon would chase businesses that offer better ROCE than their core. They took on tremendous debt to build a distribution infrastructure and see single digit profit margins as a result. Meanwhile, "virtual" companies like eBay, Google, Yahoo, etc. are able to get better returns on their assets. In the past, Amazon tried to be an e-commerce platform and license their services to Toys R Us and other firms but ran into problems because they were essentially hosting sites for their direct competitors. Now, they are trying to branch into unrelated "virtual" companies like search, media, etc.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Crappy business model.
I used to work at a company that did the same thing. What they did, they did poorly, because management had a poor attitude toward employees, customers, and partners.
Rather than fix these things, which would have soiled their resumes by admitting error, they desperately attempted to cut costs to ridiculous extremes and move into new market segments that didn't in any way leverage their strengths.
Last I knew, they were still losing money (now that they can't cut any further) and competent employees were fleeing for their lives to much better and more stable opportunities.
If you haven't foed me yet, what are you waiting for?
Revenue is up, traffic is up, but earnings are down. That is accountantcy jargon that translates as: "We are doing more but doing it less efficiently". And the stockholders noticed. They began selling.
When Amazon management noticed that, they looked for some new way to use their cash and traffic to make return on their investment. Why movies? Probably because the movie business requires - among other things - up-front investments and lots of advertising. It makes sense.
Amazon used to be so organized, but now its categories are vitually worthless. I search for USB thumb drive, I get 10,000 thing unrelated to it even when I'm in the correct category I get non-thumb drives and there are several nice thumb drive not in the correct category. For computer stuff now I go to newegg.com, at actually organized.
Or could it be the slowing economy causing Amazon's profits to drop? I mean, having to pay for your McMansion and to fill up your 10mpg SUV has to dip into your discretionary income...but yeah. I can't imagine Amazon making movies. *shrug*
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Consider how many times you will hear "amazon.com" in reference to this movie all over the news etc... Sure it seems strange, but considering the advertising budgets that corps. the size of Amazon have, it may be a good deal. And the movie may even make some money, to boot.
I haven't shopped at Amazon in a loooooooong time (the whole multiple stores and sellers in the Amazon search, so when you go to check out you have 10 different shipping and handling fees, that drove me off...) but I have heard their name mentioned a bunch lately b/c of the movie thing....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Amazon should look into it's own Gold Box and hope it finds a discount on a corporate diversification plan.
It has seemed to me for a while that Amazon is slipping. Their web site, long a model of clarity and usability, has become confusing with the proliferation of non-Amazon sellers. For example I recently did a search for a book and the top listing in the search results was only for used copies, while if I clicked the second listing I got the usual Amazon page for the book. Since you can buy used copies from the main page for the book, I don't even understand why the separate page existed, let alone that it was the first search result.
I have also had several bad experiences with free shipping. In one case, I ordered Christmas gifts well in advance. After a week or so, they moved the expected shipping date past Christmas due to the item supposedly being out of stock. I complained by e-mail (why were they only telling me this after the original shipping date had arrived) and they apologized and shipped it immediately. Umm, was it in stock or not? It could have been a supplier issue, but I also wondered if they were just trying to see how I would react.
I have returned to buy.com after ignoring them for several years. Rotten-looking web site with very poor information about items. But I have found them faster and often less expensive than Amazon.
I expect that Amazon will survive for a very long time and do lots of business, but I don't see how they're ever going to be highly profitable.
I think they've gone terribly wrong in the level of integration they have with these 3rd party merchants.
There is no way to limit searches for items to be stricly from Amazon. I've had mixed experiences with the 3rd party folks, and really I would prefer to buy directly from Amazon, but hunting through hundreds of search results to find what Amazon ACTUALLY sells is incredibly difficult and a major PIA. This has sent me to others for recent purchases.
I am definitely happy with my decision to not accept a job offer with Amazon.com. I was recently flown to Seattle to interview with Amazon.com for an accounts position, specifically dealing with their new toy division.
During the interview, I stayed in the conference room where 4 Amazonians interviewed me, one after another. I was annoyed that the interviewers were asking the same questions. They pretty much were reading off a script; however, the third interviewer at least was different enough to keep away from the script and go to the whiteboard for a quick logic session.
THE SHOCK. The offer that Amazon made me was laughable. When I was informed of the offer I asked if this was for real, and how this compared to other wages for the position. I was told that the offer that they gave me was on the high end.
I was utterly disgusted at the offer, and couldn't understand why they even bothered to fly me up to interview. After all, for the wage they gave me, Amazon could simply have recruited from the Seattle region.
Only after talking to those who were experienced with Amazon.com I realized that Amazon had horrible working conditions. Their benefits are lousy, and they pay many University level positions by wages. Yes Wages.
In the end I quickly realized they don't conduct what we business folks regard as a "balanced score card." That is balancing the needs of ALL Stakeholders. Stakeholders obviously include employees, investors, etc... From my point of view Amazon was way too focused on employee cost cutting. From my observation, they placed very little of that into human capital, and instead hope their brand name and aging business model will carry them forward into....well I don't know what.
I must admit, though, that I wish there were an "advanced search" feature beyond the current offering, including the ability to limit results to products shipped by Amazon itself.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Sure, the inventory's huge, but Amazon is cumbersome to browse. More and more of their listings are obsolete and no longer stocked, and too many are just listings for 3rd-party sellers. Amazon's prices aren't that great, and the customer feedback is actually more limited than what some other sites offer. Customer support is bureaucratic too.
In the brick and mortar world, a big department store can beat small specialty stores because one-stop shopping really saves time. But it doesn't take long to hop from one website to another. If Amazon's corporate goal is still growth through diversification, it could become a dinosaur and lose business to more-narrowly focused competitors, which often sell at lower prices (e.g. Bookpool) and are easier to shop (e.g. Newegg).