The Pebble and the Avalanche

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Current Revolutions in Business and Technology

by Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky,

author of The Pebble and The Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions

 

Mon, 2007-Dec-17, 04:45

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Are Poor Sales at Amazon Driving Them to Desperation?

I have my own personal index that tells me if a company is doing well or not: if they suddenly act stupidly, they're likely in trouble. Of all the Internet-savvy companies, Amazon is ordinarily one of the smartest; but today I've received spam from them. Spam? From Amazon? Amazing... and I have to wonder if it's an act of desperation.

I immediately placed Amazon on my "do-not buy" list for twelve months, of course, but when an otherwise smart company does something this stupid I have my suspicions. Sure enough, I see that Amazon's stock price is down. While a tick in the stock price usually isn't enough to unleash the forces of idiocy, drastically falling sales usually are; the two signals (falling stock price and spam) make me suspect that Amazon has very bad news to report in the near future.

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