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Comment by mindstab | Hacker News Reader

They mentioned amazon as kinda fading into the background as a web 1.0 company not even being able to capitalize on social, but they missed they part where amazon is one of the biggest cloud companies out there, single handedly powering, what, 1% of the internet now all by themselves? They are crazy huge in infrastructure and I can't see them going anywhere anytime soon

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I was also surprised by that point re:social [Quote]: Why has Amazon done so little in social?

What does capitalizing, or doing well with social even _mean_? I think Amazon has done quite well in social, and here's why: If I'm looking to gauge the quality of a product, I'll probably look it up on Amazon and read the customer reviews.

The value of that social aspect (i.e. getting the opinions of fellow people) of Amazon is much higher than any amount of likes, re-tweets, or an imaginary Amazon+ social network thingie.

Social is only valuable to a business if you can leverage it in some way. And looking at Amazon's review system, I would say that they have done quite well in social.

Agreed but I also think that getting input from those you know or know of in addition to total stranger review is stronger. The more of people you trust reviewing something, the more you're more inclined to trust those reviews. I think having both systems in place is better. BTW, this comment is separate from the article's argument of social.

"Fading into the background" is exactly what Amazon wants, I think. That is to say, people are no longer especially excited about them because they are everywhere, in everything, and we just take them for granted like Safeway.

I don't think they want to be like Safeway. Safeway is not exactly in good shape right now. They are in quite a fight with their competitors and the rough economy has taken quite a heavy toll on them.

Ok, perhaps Safeway isn't the best example, but hopefully my point remains clear.

Remember, this is Forbes.

I don't get Forbes.com. I know "Forbes" from their "rich people" list and my understanding was they are a US based print magazine. But the website is nothing like the website of a magazine! It looks like a giant blob of blog posts and fluff opinion pieces of myriads of different authors ("contributors").

The same magazine that name übersatanic corp Monsanto 2009's company of the year.

I read this and thought the exact same thing. I'd be willing to bet the author has absolutely no idea about the size of Amazons web infrastructure business.

Even ignoring their Web infrastructure business, Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of e-commerce. It's true that their profit margins are quite low but that's part of being a distributor, and helps them fend off competitors as they keep growing.

http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=bvg&chs=323x200...

Amazon's tablet now holds > 50% of the Android tablet market, which makes them a major mobile player too. The article was written around a headline, instead of around facts, and actual statistics and trends.

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