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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (31581)	12/29/1998 1:58:00 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Here's the kind of hit-inflation that Yahoo uses to con their advertisers and inflate their stock price: (copied from the yahoo board) Guru, great letter. I just wanted to add one thing about page views. I like yahoo, and I regularly have a browser window pointing to my.yahoo.com on my computer at work (which is constantly hooked up to the internet), in fact when I'm not looking at it, it's usually minimized, but still pointing to my.yahoo.com. Now, Yahoo has a line in the html code on that page that reads <meta http-equiv=refresh content=900> which means that every 900 seconds (15 minutes) my browser goes back to my.yahoo.com and requests an updated page (with a new banner ad usually). That means that I am probably getting counted for about 100 page views/day, every day. Including christmas day, sundays--days when I'm not within five miles of the monitor displaying that page. That little line, <meta http-equiv=refresh content=900> must have added a billion dollars to Yahoo's market cap (by inflating page views) and swindled advertisers out of several million.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (31581)	12/29/1998 2:14:00 PM
From: Gary Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

>unclear that the book part of the business is profitable.. AOL had a brilliant re-vitalization strategy, build volume, build infrastructure, high sales, low investment. They developed a loyal group tied to them with their e-mail address and chat rooms. AMZN has tried to copy the system. They are getting the volume, but how are they going to retain the loyalty? That's where the model flunks the tests. There's no hook, no high margin coffee shop, no gentle bookshop owner to confide in, no chat groups, no e-mail, no search engine. No hooks! The financial model, ie. low assets, high early promotion costs, high turnover, low margins (more like a grocery), add more products, etc. is a great start from scratch business model. It's a classic startup model, really. AMZN is doing the loss leader thing! Sell milk at cost to drive the milkman out of business and then sell 'em candy! Or booze! Have you watched one of the bell-weathers EBAY today? That's another one to avoid.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (31581)	12/29/1998 2:19:00 PM
From: Scott Bergquist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

10,000 ft view of DLJ analysis would be that, the more arcane the story, the bigger the lie. This one certainly qualifies, as it leads you down a -very- narrow path. Though all my investments in AMZN (disclosure) have been puts, I still am very happy to buy the occasional book from Amazon, and have done so for two years. But I fail to "feel" the impact so often stated, whereby I have agreed to "be marketed" from having purchased books at amazon.com. I feel very certain that their sales to me have been at a net loss. I also feel that their "secret sauce" is probably a lax security program for passwords. I cannot believe that I gave them the right password over eight month intervals between purchases, yet the "retained" name and address AND credit card info pops right back up, no problem. I think the "ease of use" separates AMZN from other online retailers. But, it is NO SECRET and others will follow, and improve upon it.