Trip to space with Jeff Bezos sells for $28 million

WASHINGTON - A mystery bidder paid $28 million at auction Saturday for a seat alongside Jeff Bezos on board the first crewed spaceflight of the billionaire's company Blue Origin next month.

The Amazon founder revealed this week that both he and his brother Mark would take seats on board the company's New Shepard launch vehicle on July 20, to fly to the edge of space and back.

The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winner of Saturday's charity auction, whose identity remains unknown, and by a fourth, as yet unnamed space tourist.

"The name of the auction winner will be released in the weeks following the auction's conclusion," tweeted Blue Origin following the sale. 

"Then, the fourth and final crew member will be announced -- stay tuned."

Saturday's successful bidder beat out some 20 rivals in an auction launched on May 19 and wrapped up with a 10-minute, livecast frenzy.

Bidding had reached $4.8 million by Thursday, but shot up spectacularly in the final live auction, rising by million dollar increments.

The proceeds -- aside from a six percent auctioneer's commission -- will go to Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, which aims to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM -- science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Taking off from a desert in western Texas, the New Shepard trip will last 10 minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognized boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

After lift-off, the capsule separates from its booster, then spends four minutes at an altitude exceeding 60 miles (100 kilometers), during which time those on board experience weightlessness and can observe the curvature of Earth.

The booster lands autonomously on a pad two miles from the launch site, and the capsule floats back to the surface with three large parachutes that slow it down to about a mile per hour when it lands.

LIFELONGD REAM

Bezos, who announced earlier this year he is stepping down as Amazon's chief executive to spend more time on other projects including Blue Origin, has said it was a lifelong dream to fly into space.

Blue Origin's New Shepard has successfully carried out more than a dozen uncrewed test runs from its facility in Texas' Guadalupe Mountains.

"We're ready to fly some astronauts," said Blue Origin's director of astronaut and orbital sales, Ariane Cornell, on Saturday.

The reusable suborbital rocket system was named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space 60 years ago.

The automated capsules with no pilot have six seats with horizontal backrests placed next to large portholes, in a futuristic cabin with swish lighting. Multiple cameras help immortalize the few minutes the space tourists experience weightlessness.

PRIVATE SPACE RACE

Blue Origin's maiden crewed flight comes in a context of fierce competition in the field of private space exploration -- with Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, all jostling for pole position.

Bezos has a very public rivalry with Musk, whose SpaceX is planning orbital flights that would cost millions of dollars and send people much further into space.

SpaceX has already begun to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and is a competitor for government space contracts.

Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, hopes to begin regular commercial suborbital flights in early 2022, with eventual plans for 400 trips a year.

Some 600 people have booked flights, costing $200,000 to $250,000 -- and there has been talk of Branson himself taking part in a test flight this summer, although no date has been set.

Agence France-Presse

Latest Kindle version is ready — Amazon CEO

Amazon.com Inc’s latest Kindle version is ready and further details could be expected next week, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos tweeted on Monday.

This device would be Amazon’s eighth-generation e-book reader. The company launched a $50 tablet last year.

Amazon declined to provide any additional comment.

source: interaksyon.com

Amazon snaps up live video startup Twitch for $970 million

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com Inc snapped up live-streaming gaming network Twitch Interactive for about $970 million in cash, reflecting Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos’ resolve to transform Amazon into an Internet destination beyond its core retail operations.

The move, announced by the two companies on Monday, is the largest deal in Amazon’s 20-year history and will help the U.S. e-commerce company vie with Apple Inc and Google Inc in the fast-growing world of online gaming, which accounts for more than 75 percent of all mobile app sales. 


The acquisition involves some retention agreements that push the deal over $1 billion, a source close to the deal told Reuters.

“Twitch will further push Amazon into the gaming community while also helping it with video and advertising,” Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter said in a note.

Twitch’s format, which lets viewers message players and each other during live play, is garnering interest as one of the fastest-growing segments of digital video streaming, which in turn is attracting more and more advertising dollars.

The deal, expected to close in the second half of the year, is an unusual step for Amazon, which tends to build from within or make smaller acquisitions. Tech rival Google was earlier in talks to buy Twitch, which launched slightly more than three years ago, one person briefed on the deal said.

Neither Amazon nor Twitch would discuss how the deal came together or comment on Google’s interest.

In an interview, Twitch Chief Executive Officer Emmett Shear said the startup contacted Amazon because its deep pockets and ad sales expertise would allow the startup to pursue its strategic objectives more quickly.

“The reason why we reached out to Amazon, the reason I thought working for Amazon, having Twitch being a part of Amazon, would be a great idea for us (because) they would give us the resources to pursue these things that we honestly already want to pursue and they’d let us do it faster,” Shear said.

Ethan Kurzweil, a partner at Bessemer Ventures, which has backed Twitch since its earliest days, said Amazon’s expertise in developer platforms through Amazon Web Services gave it a window into Twitch’s potential growth.

“They understand the power of engaged developer platforms,” he said, noting Twitch’s popularity with game developers and publishers was as important as its popularity with consumers.

Bessemer provided Twitch an introduction to Frank Quattrone, a banker at boutique investment bank Qatalyst Partners, with a view to “catalyzing interest in Twitch,” Kurzweil said.

Quattrone advised Amazon on its 1997 initial public offering.

Twitch raised $20 million in funding last September from game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software and firms such as Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital.

Other venture backers include Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates.

More than 55 million unique visitors viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch in July.

Some video game live casters on Twitch have embedded links to the Amazon’s online store. Analysts said the deal may result in more product tie-ins and a deeper integration with Amazon Instant Video and Amazon devices like the Kindle Fire tablet and recently launched Fire TV set-top box.

Twitch and Amazon did not disclose details on new retail opportunities for Amazon through Twitch’s network of gamers.

“We have lots of ideas we’ve discussed, there’s a lot of interest and a number of things we can pursue,” Michael Frazzini, VP of Amazon Games, said in an interview.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman and Malathi Nayak; additional reporting by

source: interaksyon.com

Start-ups to receive cloud support with Amazon Web Services’ new AWS Activate

MANILA, Philippines — Start-ups can now expect a boost in their cloud adoption as Amazon Web Services launches AWS Activate.

AWS Activate bundles resources in packages, designed to enable startups of different types to easily and quickly get started with AWS and successfully use the AWS platform to help grow their businesses.

The bundle includes a structured package of resources for startups, including AWS credits, training, developer support, a special startup community forum and special offers from third parties.

“Many of the world’s most successful startups already build their businesses on the AWS cloud,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president, Amazon Web Services. “Based on feedback from VCs (venture capitalists), startups and entrepreneurs, we developed AWS Activate to help even more startup organizations get going quickly by leveraging AWS to help build their business. We’re happy to offer this to startups of all kinds from around the world today,”

AWS Activate is organized into two packages: a Self-Starter package, which any startup can apply for, and a Portfolio package, which can be applied for by startups in select accelerator, incubator, venture capital seed funds or entrepreneur organizations. Each package includes varied levels of resources to help fit customers’ needs.

Startups receiving either package get access to the Startup Forum, where AWS experts and other startup customers can share best practices. The forum gives startups a way to learn from and interact with a community of peers building world-changing apps on AWS.

In addition, startups accepted into AWS Activate may have access to special offers, such as product discounts, from select third-party companies in the AWS ecosystem, providing startups with additional valuable technologies and tools.

“Amazon Web Services has been an invaluable partner in Kickstart Ventures’ mission of helping startups in the Philippines start faster and scale,” said Minette Navarette, president, Kickstart Ventures. “The sixteen startups in our portfolio are among the best in the Philippines, and an important part of their business is the underlying cloud platform that AWS provides. AWS Activate will provide even more support and resources for our startup companies to be successful.”

source: interaksyon.com

Print newspapers could become ‘luxury’: Amazon chief

NEW YORK CITY — Amazon chief executive and new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that print newspapers could one day become a luxury item.

“Some day, I don’t know how many years in the future — it could be decades — but I think printed newspapers on actual paper may be a luxury item,” Bezos told NBC in an interview.

“People still have horses but it’s not their primary way of commuting to the office,” Bezos added.

Bezos was questioned on whether he envisions a day when the Washington Post, which he bought in August, is no longer printed.

The Amazon founder shook up the media world when he announced last month the $250 million purchase of the Post, ending decades of control by the Graham family that included the newspaper’s history-changing coverage of the Watergate scandal and other giant stories.

Bezos said in a recent interview that he is eager to experiment with new techniques to win reader loyalty in the digital era, as he tries to reverse the Post’s decline and restore it to profitability.

source: interaksyon.com

How will Amazon’s Jeff Bezos change The Washington Post?

SEATTLE — Technology and media circles are abuzz at how e-commerce wunderkind Jeff Bezos plans to modernize The Washington Post, a money-losing bastion of the old economy.

Among the top predictions: the man who transformed retailing will want to wean the venerable paper off its print edition; expand the Post’s real-time content for a Twitter generation; share Amazon’s near-unparalleled data on online buyers; and devise novel avenues to sell anything from books to smartphones to the Post’s half a million readers.

The founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc hasn’t given much away since he struck a deal to buy the 135-year-old paper for $250 million. But he did tell employees on Monday that they will have to “invent” and “experiment” as the Internet revolutionizes the news business.

Although Bezos, not Amazon, is buying the Post, it is widely expected that he will in some way ‘Amazon-ify’ the news business, bringing across strategies imprinted on the company he founded in a garage 19 years ago.

One thing is clear: the famed innovator is bringing enormous street cred to bear on a problem that has baffled newspaper owners for over a decade: how to reverse the ebb of advertisers to other media.

“Amazon realized information travels much faster as a digital object rather than a physical object, and now Amazon is a world leader in e-books,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, a popular online content sharing platform. “The analogy holds true for newspapers. Bezos knows that transformation incredibly well and he can help them navigate that transition.”

The first casualty of this shift will likely be newspapers themselves. Bezos remarked to a German paper last year that printed news would largely disappear in 20 years.

Bezos could emulate Netflix Inc CEO Reed Hastings, said Levie, transforming a physical distribution network into a streaming service that adapts to customers’ choices. That means more real-time news delivered via PCs, tablets and phones.

Readers can already get the Post on Amazon’s Kindle – as well as on Apple Inc’s iPad and other devices powered by Google Inc – but a closer tie-up seems likely.

One idea would be for the Post to offer news via a branded tablet, perhaps given away with a one-year subscription, much as phone companies subsidize handsets, said Thomas Russo, a partner of the Gardner Russo & Gardner investment firm, one of the biggest Washington Post Co shareholders. Amazon for a long time sold its Kindle e-readers at cost, effectively giving away a device through which buyers then access its online trove.

“With technology being what it is, that would not be financially crippling,” said Russo, adding that by moving readers off expensive printed papers, “You would have re-oriented your cost structure.”

AMAZON FOCUS

Perhaps Amazon’s greatest strength is its knowledge of customers built up through their buying history, which makes the company a very efficient marketer. That technology applied to the Post could make its advertising business much more valuable.

“Nobody knows more about Internet media distribution than Jeff Bezos,” said Richard Brandt, author of ‘One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com.’ “If anyone can figure out how to do this profitably, it is he. That will benefit the Post and, possibly, all media organizations.”

Bezos wrote in a letter to Post employees that he did not intend to get involved in day-to-day management of the paper, and would leave news production to the existing leadership team. But he did hint at a shift to a more local, personalized idea of news, which echoes Amazon’s approach to customers.

“Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there,” wrote Bezos.

His purchase of the Post could be viewed as an extension of Amazon’s move towards content creation, most recently creating its own movies and TV series, which gives the company a new way of engaging with customers.

“‘News’ is the digital equivalent of a high-traffic intersection: as people pass through to figure out what’s happening they might also stop to do some shopping,” wrote Henry Blodget, founder and CEO of news site Business Insider, which Bezos has also invested in. “Content and commerce companies have long dabbled with combining the two experiences, but no one has really nailed it.”

Bezos has time to work out a formula. He has shown at Amazon that he is willing to work on ideas for years before they become profitable. And by making the purchase personal, he has removed demanding shareholders from the equation.

The Post is already one of the more prominent print publications on the web. The Washington Post Co’s online publishing activities, primarily washingtonpost.com and Slate, took in $29.8 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2013, up 15 percent from a year ago. Slate is not included in the sale to Bezos.

That is just over 20 percent of The Washington Post Co’s overall newspaper publishing revenue, but is in line with other large papers. The company earned much greater revenue from its education and cable TV operations.

“The Washington Post has already been one of the most forward-thinking newsrooms,” said Box’s Levie, citing its WaPo Labs project, a team that experiments with new ways of providing news from a ‘Social Reader’ Facebook app to the Trove personalized news gatherer, which pulls from 10,000 sources. WaPo Labs is also not included in the sale.

“They have already been fairly tech-savvy,” said Levie. “It’s a business that has to transform itself from print to digital and they’ve done a pretty good job doing so. The benefit of having an owner like Jeff Bezos is you’ll be able to continue to fund those experiments.”

source: interaksyon.com

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to buy the Washington Post

Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos will buy the Washington Post newspaper for $250 million in a surprise deal that ends the Graham family’s 80 years of ownership and hands one of the country’s most influential publications to the tech entrepreneur.

Bezos, hailed by many as a visionary who helped transform Internet retail, called his acquisition a personal endeavor and reassured Post employees and readers he will preserve the paper’s journalistic tradition, while driving innovation.

The acquisition, the latest in a flurry of recent media deals including the New York Times Co’s sale of the Boston Globe for $70 million, is a further indication of the unprecedented challenges newspapers face as advertising revenue and readership decline.

Shares of the Washington Post Co climbed more than 5 percent to $599.85 after hours – their highest level in almost five years.

“I understand the critical role the Post plays in Washington, DC and our nation, and the Post’s values will not change,” Bezos said in a letter addressed to employees and published on the newspaper’s website.

“There will of course be change at the Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership,” he added. “We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”

Bezos, who has built Seattle-based Amazon.com into a shopping and online technology force over the last two decades, made a small foray into media earlier this year with a small investment in Internet news site Business Insider.

The Washington Post, home to journalists as the “Watergate” team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, is among the rapidly dwindling number of U.S. newspapers with a profitable business – a function of the rapid migration of readers to Internet and other digital media sources.

Warren Buffett owns a slice of its parent company, Washington Post Co, whose operating income has plummeted almost 40 percent since 2008, to $146.2 million in 2012.

“I doubt it is a financially oriented investment for him as much as a chance to play a more important role as a steward of an important public trust/asset,” said James Barksdale, President of Atlanta investment firm Equity Investment Corp.

Barksdale said his firm did not own Washington Post shares because he thought they traded higher than he thought justified, “probably due to the Buffett halo,” he added.

Bezos will buy the Post along with other newspaper assets from the Washington Post Co. Amazon.com is to be kept separate from the Post deal, according to the Washington Post.

The deal, which caught many industry watchers by surprise, was arranged in private by Allen & Co. It comes on the heels of near-unprecedented media deal activity this year, with the Globe transaction announced just over the weekend, the Tribune Co hiving off its publishing and broadcasting businesses and the Los Angeles Times reportedly up for sale.

Graham family relinquish their claim

Washington Post Chairman and Chief Executive Donald E. Graham, whose family owns the paper, explained his decision to part ways with the publication, which will continue to be headed on a daily basis by CEO Katharine Weymouth.

“As the newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we have no answers, Katharine and I began to ask ourselves if our small public company was still the best home for the newspaper. Our revenues had declined seven years in a row,” Graham said in his letter to employees.

“Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”

The transaction covers The Washington Post and other publishing businesses, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.

Bezos is the world’s 19th richest person with a fortune of $25.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His other major personal project is called Blue Origin, which aims to be one of the first non-government funded ventures to send people and cargo into space, potentially winning lucrative contracts that were once fulfilled by NASA.

Bezos has already spent millions of dollars on this project, with millions more in the pipeline.

He did not elaborate in great detail on his motivations behind his latest deal on Monday. But in 2009, when asked at the debut of the Kindle 2 whether the electronic-reader could help print media, Bezos said he thought there were “genuine opportunities” to save journalism.

“And we’re excited about helping with that,” he added, according to the International Herald Tribune.

source: interaksyon.com

Amazon's Next Conquest: Your Closet

MANILA, Philippines — Seattle— Amazon is so serious about its next big thing that it hired three women to do nothing but try on size 8 shoes for its Web reviews. Full time.

The online retailer is shooting 3,000 fashion images a day in a photo studio using patent-pending technology.

And it is happily losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year on free shipping—and, on apparel, even free returns—to keep its shoppers coming back.

Having wounded the publishing industry, slashed pricing in electronics, and made the toy industry quiver, Amazon is taking on the high-end clothing business in its typical way: go big and spare no expense.

“It’s Day 1 in the category,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. Though characteristically tight-lipped on bottom-line details, Bezos said the company was making a “significant” investment in fashion as it tried to convince designer brands that it wanted to work with them, not against them.

The traditional retail world—and many major brands that want no part of Amazon—are gearing up to fight for their lives.

“It has the latitude to set prices and charge whatever it wants,” Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst for Forrester Research, said of Amazon. “That is a huge threat for brands.”

Amazon has sold clothing for years. But recently it has focused on signing on hundreds of contemporary and high-end brands, including Michael Kors, Vivienne Westwood, Catherine Malandrino, Jack Spade and Tracy Reese, and it continues to prowl for more. On Monday, some of Amazon’s muscle was on display as the company sponsored, and live-streamed, the Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the accompanying exhibit. Bezos, the event’s honorary chairman, said he was advised by Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor, to wear a pocket square with his Tom Ford tuxedo (which is not available on Amazon). He did so.

Amazon’s decision to go after high fashion is about plain economics. Because Amazon’s costs are about the same whether it is shipping a $10 book or a $1,000 skirt, “gross profit dollars per unit will be much higher on a fashion item,” Bezos said, and it already makes money on fashion. While its MyHabit site, started last year, uses a flash-sale model to compete with Gilt Groupe, Bezos says the company’s new effort is not about selling clothes at deep discounts but at prices that ensure “the designer brands are happy.”

Amazon has not just size on its side but money. The company has about $5.7 billion in cash and marketable securities, and Bezos has long taken a stance that investing in the business is the best place to use it. The company can afford to do things that some competitors cannot, like hire a bevy of stylists for the website models or investigate replacing the plain brown shipping box with a fancier package for clothes.

Until now, fashion has been one of the few categories that Amazon has tried to dominate without success. In addition to its own site, Amazon bought the shoe site Zappos.com for more than $1 billion in 2009, started the shoe site Endless.com and MyHabit, and bought the boutique Shopbop in 2006.

But many brands stayed away because they said Amazon’s site often looked too commoditized. “It’s not a place where you look at it and are like, ‘Oh, my clothes look and feel really good,”’ said Andy Page, founder of men’s fashion brand Bonobos, which does not sell through Amazon.

Amazon hopes to fix that problem by going luxe. Bezos said Amazon.com’s initial forays into the high end had helped raise apparel sales by triple digits.

Amazon’s considerable computing capability, for example, has been turned to fashion and the analysis of enormous amounts of shopping data. The company has also made a “disproportionate” investment in photography, said Cathy Beaudoin, the president of fashion for Amazon. The photography studio, in Kentucky, can shoot more than two images a minute, allowing the company to post new items daily on the Web that were photographed hours earlier.

Most of all, the company is working to improve its presentation, so far most evidently on MyHabit, which Bezos said represented where Amazon wanted to go with all of its Web design for fashion.

Instead of static product images, for example, models spin and pose to show off the clothing. The model’s body measurements and the clothing measurements are provided to help with sizing. And shopper-friendly advice—does the size 8 shoe run big or small?—is prominent.

The ramp-up has created buzz as the company has hired models, stylists and makeup artists, started using customer data to personalize brand and size search results, and runs the first advertisement campaign ever, in print and outdoors, for the Amazon clothing store.

In the retail clothing world, fears are growing that few will be able to compete with a stepped-up Amazon.

For some brands, the company’s size alone makes an overture from Amazon difficult to reject. “The amount of eyeballs and traffic and retail dollars that are generated through their website” is impressive, said Alex Bhathal, co-president of Raj Manufacturing, which makes licensed swimwear brands like Ella Moss.

Amazon can also offer brands more attractive terms than many other stores. For instance, Amazon does not ask for “markdown money” when items do not sell, or return unsold product to a brand, said Ron Friedman, an accountant at Marcum LLP. who advises brands like James Perse and American Rag.

And to woo brands, Amazon is willing to make big buys. Jason Cauchi, creative director of Dallin Chase, had been selling some merchandise to Amazon’s Shopbop. Recently Amazon said it would buy items from the entire collection for the Amazon.com site, which Cauchi said was a rare offer and difficult to refuse.

A retailer like Amazon would typically pay brands a wholesale price for clothes, then set the retail price itself (although more powerful brands often mandate a minimum retail price).

While brands sell some of the same items to different stores, they are increasingly developing exclusive colors or styles to avoid price-comparison issues. “A manufacturer does not want to kill a business, and the best way to kill a business is to have the same product selling for less on Amazon,” Friedman, the retail accountant, said.

But Bezos said that, despite having taken a low-price approach in other industries, Amazon would not in fashion. “There’s a sophisticated markdown cadence in the fashion industry that we think makes sense and we’re basically following that established approach,” he said.

There are many disbelievers, given Amazon’s history in other industries. Bezos, moreover, has to deal with the fact that he is no fashion guy. Asked in the interview about the brands he was wearing, Bezos could not name the brands of his shirt or shoes. The jeans, he said, were Prada (not available on Amazon); his blue “Jeff” security badge was dangling from them. (NYT)

source: mb.com.ph