The $64k question is whether this is a real number. I've bought books from Amazon but can't remember my login. Are there 10.7M clients or simply 1.07M? If I wanted to login in a hurry, I'd simply create a new account. Since Amazon puts a premium on 'ease of use', it's predictable that I will create multiple accounts. Once sales/account starts to slip, well, how do you determine the forward progress of the company?
William,
You are getting at the heart of the corruption of the Internet industry... the misrepresentation of numbers with intent to mislead (cover up the lack of a big market). I'm not saying for a fact that it is happening with Amazon, Yahoo, or any other Web company... the numbers Internet companies are reporting should be questioned, though. It seems, sometimes, that the Internet is all about double, triple, and quadruple counting the same users.
Getting people to register more than once whether at Amazon, Yahoo, or another Web site is probably seen by Internet companies as a positive because then the reported numbers for Media consumption are much bigger. Internet companies talk about "unique" users but how can "unique" be proven? If you register more than once at a Web site, how does a Web site know this? What motivation would a Web site have for eliminating double, triple, and quadruple counting?
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