Amazon.com Celebrates Fifth Anniversary; Timeline Illustrates Milestones and Little Known Facts About Leading Online Retailer's First Five Years.Business/High Tech Editors What: Five years ago this week, Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos (born January 12, 1964 , Albuquerque ) is the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon.com. Bezos, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. launched Amazon.com -- a small online book retailer -- from his garage. The company's mission? Leverage the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest and most enjoyable online shopping experience, while becoming the Earth's most customer-centric company. Today Amazon.com is the world's leading online retailer, whose customer-centric mission includes being the place to find and discover anything (with a capital "A") one wants to buy online. The company's customer base and product offerings have exploded since the early days ... and Amazon.com is today recognized as a pioneer in changing the way people shop. The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce has raised the customer experience bar, shifting power from the retailer to the customer. Amazon.com has believed in and supported this evolution since it opened it virtual doors in 1995. Graphic: Amazon.com's five year history includes numerous well- and little-known milestones, ranging from ground-breaking e-commerce developments to funny, behind the scenes anecdotes. Here are just a few of the highlights that have helped build Amazon.com's 20+ million customer base. Recommended usage size: Minimum of 6" wide. Color and black-and-white versions attached. Text Only: Following is a text-only version of this graphic, which includes several, additional little-known Amazon.com facts for use in editorial coverage. Notes: Amazon.com currently lists more than 18 million unique items in categories such as books, CDs, toys, electronics, videos, DVDs, tools and hardware, lawn and patio items, kitchen products, software and video games See video game console. , as well as auctions. zShops, and electronic greeting cards See e-card. . For more information, contact Kristin Schaefer at 206/266-7180, kristins@amazon.com. Five years of Amazon.com July 1995 -- Amazon.com opens for business. Systems beep every time customer places an order. Constant beeping drives employees nuts. Beeper beeper - pager disabled. Orders, thankfully, continue. -- By month's end, books shipped to all 50 states in the U.S. and 45 countries worldwide. September 1995 -- Seattle Yellow Pages listing under "bookstores" results in customers trying to place orders by phone. We were kind of hoping they'd use the Web site. We don't renew the listing.(a) October 1995 -- First 100-order day. (First 100-order hour comes less than a year later. One hundred-order minutes are common today).(a) November 1995 -- Moved Web site to new office in back seat of chief programmer's Honda. Site down for just 20 minutes. July 1996 -- Associates Program launched. First Amazon.com Associate is Pure-bred PuppyNet. www.puppynet.com. Most common response in the office: "awwww..." (Today, there are more than 450,000 Amazon.com Associates.)(a) May 1997 -- IPO (Initial Public Offering) The first time a company offers shares of stock to the public. While not a computer term per se, many founders, employees and insiders of computer companies have found this acronym more exciting than any tech term they ever heard. -- Amazon.com appears on the NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on as AMZN AMZN Amazon.com (NASDAQ symbol) (a) July 1997 -- Forty-four Amazonians co-author online short story with John Updike, who pens the opening and closing paragraphs. Amazon.com editors go cross-eyed reading through thousands of entries daily. September 1997 -- Instant gratification reaches new heights: 1-Click(R)shopping introduced. (a) -- Lucky customer wins law school on us, in contest celebrating publication of John Grisham's The Street Lawyer. October 1997 -- One-millionth customer places order. It's hand-delivered to Japan by Jeff Bezos. Package contains Windows NT (Windows New Technology) A 32-bit operating system from Microsoft for Intel x86 CPUs. NT is the core technology in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (see Windows). Available in separate client and server versions, it includes built-in networking and preemptive multitasking. manual and Kitty Kelly's Princess Di biography.(a) November 1997 -- Vice President Al Gore Noun 1. Al Gore - Vice President of the United States under Bill Clinton (born in 1948) Albert Gore Jr., Gore drops by. Works customer service phone queues. Looks spiffy spiffy - /spi'fee/ 1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy X version of empire yet?" This was common mainstream slang during the 1940s. 2. in headset. Doesn't do a bad job, at all.(a) January 1998 -- Amazon.com announces its 1997 bestseller list, a cool mix of fiction, design and technology titles. February 1998 -- The little guy gets a leg up as Amazon.com Advantage launches, leveling the playing field for independent publishers. (Program now includes music and video.) (a) April 1998 -- Amazon.com acquires the Internet Movie Database (IMDB See in-memory database. ). There is much rejoicing. May 1998 -- Garry Trudeau Garretson Beekman Trudeau (born July 21, 1948, in New York City) is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip. Background and education Garry Trudeau is the great-grandson of Dr. joins with Amazon.com customers to pen the first collaborative online comic strip comic strip, combination of cartoon with a story line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters, whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of "balloons" containing written speech. , The People's Doonsbury @amazon.com. Thousands enter panel captions daily. The outcome is a good giggle, if we do say so: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/promotions/doonesbury/doonesbury-home.html/ . June 1998 -- Drumroll drum·roll n. 1. A rapid succession of short sounds produced by beating a drum. 2. Emphatic support for a cause: "The drumroll for sustainable agriculture . . . , please: Amazon Music opens for business.(a) October 1998 -- We're international! Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de open. (a) -- Stephen King <noinclude></noinclude>
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of over 200 stories including over 50 bestselling horror and stops by to sign few copies of Bag of Bones. A Corgi-owner himself, King writes a lovely inscription in one book to the original company pooch, a Corgi corgi: see Cardigan Welsh corgi; Pembroke Welsh corgi. named Rufus. November 1998 -- We're ready for our closeup, DeMille: Amazon Video & DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. opens. (a) December 1998 -- More than 1 million new customers shop Amazon.com during the holiday season. Employees from every department in the company work 'round-the-clock -- wrapping, packing and shipping orders to insure they'll be delivered in time for the holidays. March 1999 -- Amazon Auctions opens, bringing virtual, gavel-dropping fun to homes worldwide. April 1999 -- Amazon E-cards launches, based on the belief that if cards were free, the world would be a better place. Woof, the waving English Bulldog English bulldog see bulldog. , quickly pulls to the head of the e-cards pack.(a) May 1999 -- All New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times bestseller list titles are discounted to 50 percent, everyday (and they still are). June 1999 -- Ten-millionth customer served. Customer population is now equivalent to the population of Greece. The order? A set of golf clubs, purchased via Amazon Auctions. -- Amazon.com becomes first Internet retailer to offer free digital music downloads to customers with offerings from Lyle Lovett and Randy Newman to Sarah McLachlan and Public Enemy. July 1999 -- Amazon Toys opens for business. Customers' Slinky slink·y adj. slink·i·er, slink·i·est 1. Stealthy, furtive, and sneaking. 2. Informal Graceful, sinuous, and sleek: wore a slinky outfit to the party. needs, thankfully, are met.(a) -- Amazon Electronics opens for business, quickly upping the number of Pilots in the world's palms. -- A welcome pop cultural embrace: Amazon.com is the answer to a Jeopardy question and a punch line punch line n. The climactic phrase or statement of a joke, producing a sudden humorous effect. punch line Noun the last line of a joke or funny story that gives it its point Noun 1. in a Jay Leno monologue joke. September 1999 -- Amazon zShops launches, enabling anyone to offer merchandise for sale at Amazon.com, be they micro- or major manufacturers, small businesses or global corporations, specialized retailers or "mega-conglomerates". November 1999 -- Four new stores join the Amazon.com family: Software, Video Games, Gift Ideas and Tools and Hardware. Finally -- we provide customers with the tools they need to build shelves for all the stuff they've been buying from us! -- Amazon.com launches its Wishlist service. Countless customers get presents they actually want for the holidays. Harmony reigns. -- Sothebys.amazon.com launches, bringing authenticated art and collectibles to our auction experience. First offerings include Austin Powers' Spy Who Shagged shag 1 n. 1. A tangle or mass, especially of rough matted hair. 2. a. A coarse long nap, as on a woolen cloth. b. Cloth having such a nap. 3. A rug with a thick rough pile. Me Time Machine and salvaged treasure from the "Ship of Gold," the SS Central America. December 1999 -- Amazon.com has now shipped 20 million items to 150 countries worldwide. (a) -- Eight-o-clock p.m., 12/23. Deluxe Scrabble set ordered. It arrives in Honolulu the next day. -- Jeff Bezos is chosen as Time Magazine's Person of the Year. January 2000 -- Customers smile. New logo smiles back.(a) -- You ain't heard nothin' yet: Amazon.com and Audible, Inc. team up to provide Amazon.com customers with spoken-word content online. April 2000 -- Amazon Lawn and Patio opens. Buying online gives customers more time to enjoy both lawns and patios. May 2000 -- Calling all cooks! Amazon Kitchen is open for business. July 2000 -- Amazon.com celebrates fifth anniversary! Twenty million customers now served -- and we're ready for more! (a) = Appears on timeline graphic Note to editors: The URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. under the May 1998 section has been broken up to fit. Note: A Photo is available at URL: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?pw.071200/bw1. |
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