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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (12886)	8/8/1998 12:57:00 PM
From: Tom Kearney	Respond to of 164684

Bad news for the shorts. A market cap of $6B is certainly not going to scare away all the folks who'll want to get in on this (especially since the float is a small fraction of this). Everyone who does REAL business (as opposed to dabbling in stocks) is going to want to take a flyer at this. AMZN will have no problem raising money for years. Profitability will not be a factor here for a long time. Check out the first post on this thread again.... " IPO coming out tomorrow. $14-16 range. Another internet flash in the pan?? With Barnesandnoble.com, AOL and CUC Int'l standing ready to eat Amazon's lunch, what are peoples' thoughts on when to short this one? Can you say roman candle... " That was one split, 700% ago. Regards, TK

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (12886)	8/8/1998 1:00:00 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Mark, thanks for the link. Amazon's next e-commerce move will DRUGS?. TomD does this mean that Bezos will by-pass the MD and send antibiotics to our homes? Oh, no not another deal with Kleiner,Perkins (TomD's favorite VC)? If Bezos had gone to Stanford, he would have called his 'Thing', Star Trek.com.

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (12886)	8/8/1998 1:21:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Amzn moves to build e-commerce empire: thestandard.net Mark, That is a good article looking at the perspective from both side. Thank you for providing it. Glenn

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (12886)	8/8/1998 1:24:00 PM
From: umbro	Respond to of 164684

Amazon Moves to Build E-commerce Empire But skeptics wonder if Junglee, PlanetAll buys reflect strategy or financial opportunity. By Mark Gimein and Alex Lash [ thestandard.net ] Thanks, Mark for the ref. to the article. This is a must-read for anyone trying to follow Amazon.com, and e-commerce. A few excerpts: The not-so-hidden message in Amazon.com's spate of buys is that, if everything goes according to plan, the balance of power will shift dramatically from media portals to e-stores. Don't think of Amazon.com as a bookseller. Don't even think of it as a Wal-Mart of the Web. Think of it as the department-store anchor tenant in the biggest mall on Earth. ... Why the secrecy? Well, if you were embarking on a strategy likely to alienate some of the biggest Net players, you'd probably be cagey, too. Seen in isolation, Amazon.com's latest acquisitions seem to be a peculiar fit. PlanetAll provides 1.5 million registered members with an online contact and calendar manager. Aside from an opportunity to provide gift suggestions to members who use PlanetAll for birthday reminders, the relationship to Amazon.com's retailing business is tenuous. Meanwhile, Junglee has a highly touted product- and price-comparison service that, awkwardly, often shows Amazon.com's competitors offering lower prices. While Bezos and Co. have hinted at PlanetAll's use in the Amazon.com world, it's not altogether clear if they'll use Junglee in its current form. ... Says West Shell, CEO of Web marketing company Netcentives, "It's very clear that Amazon.com is deciding it wants to be a commerce portal. . They will be competing with major retailers in key product categories. What they need now for their portal is content, building in different levels of functionality for their members to come and stay at Amazon.com." This, in turn, sets Amazon.com up for a fight with the portals. Brett Bullington, executive VP of Excite, agrees with the general perception that Amazon.com is building a commerce portal of some sort, but says he isn't worried."If [what Amazon.com is building] is a mall," says Bullington, "there will be multiple malls. It's a big universe. There will not be a single source of commercial activity. If there is, then Amazon.com is in a phenomenal situation. But I don't think that's the case." Officials at smaller portals were more wary of the new competition and noticeably less sanguine. "We'll honor our existing contract with Junglee," says Kirby Winfield, marketing director of fledgling portal Go2Net, "and we're not cutting off any options, but it's not likely we'll renew with them." The concerns of Go2Net and its bigger Web portal brethren will certainly be an issue for Amazon.com, which depends on them for some of its traffic. ... But not every observer believes that there is a thoroughly developed method in Amazon.com's acquisitions. Financial players point out that a major incentive for Bezos to go on a buying binge is simply that he can. "Amazon.com has a $5 billion market capitalization. That's a tremendously inflated currency. The rational part of me says they should go spend it while they're using discounted dollars that might be worth no more than 30 cents," says venture fund manager Alan Salzman, a partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners. "That's what I would do."