Category: Amazon
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Product management at Amazon – What is it like?

Since reading the well known answer on Quora about Amazon’s approach to product development and product management by Ian McAllister I’ve been intrigued about Amazon and its product management function. In his Quora answer, McAllister – General Manager for AmazonSmile explains about Amazon’s approach called “working backwards”. I guess most non-Amazon product people are familiar with the internal press releases that Amazon product people…
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Twitch and its appeal for Google and Microsoft

The other day I heard about the rumoured takeover of Twitch by Google for the handsome amount of $1 billion. I have to be honest; up until that point I had never heard about Twitch. Reason enough to look into Twitch and a possible ratio for Google willing to spend such a large amount of cash on…
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What to expect from Amazon’s anticipatory shipping patent?

Earlier this year Amazon patented its “anticipatory shipping” solution, which basically comes down to Amazon shipping products even before customers have ordered them. Amazon will use an algorithm to pre-determine things that people want to buy, based on a mix of data including previous purchases, questionnaires, wish lists, browsing data, demographic data, etc. Even though…
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How supermarkets are becoming entertainment platforms
Over the past year or so supermarket giants such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco have started venturing into entertainment content. A good example is supermarket giant Tesco which acquired We7 (digital music) and Blinkbox (video on demand) last year. Its UK competitor Sainsbury bought online entertainment platform Global Media Vault and Anobii (eBooks) around the same time. I wondered about…
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Barnes & Noble doesn’t only do books and tablets, it also does recommendations
I’m always intrigued to find out how digital businesses tackle the issue of user engagement through tailored recommendations. Content providers like Netflix and Amazon notoriously spend a lot of money and effort into their recommendation engines and it was interesting to find about how Barnes & Noble (‘B&N’) are now handling recommendations through their latest “NOOK” device.…
