Amazon's Beast That Is Prime, Netflix Pumps Up And More On This Week's CTRL ALT Delete Segment On CHOM 97.7 FM
Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly on i Heart Radio, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away about what’s going on in the digital world. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This week we discussed:
Amazon is a beast. And that beast keeps growing. Last week, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wrote his annual letter to shareholders. To date, the company has held the number of people signed up to their Prime service private. In 2015, he said that Prime had “tens of millions” of customers. Well, now we know that more that 100 million people are paying the Prime fee for the privilege of free two-day shipping and services like Prime Video and Prime Music. This is staggering. It’s more expensive and has more members than Costco. Plus, people who have Prime tend to buy more at Amazon.
Netflix? They’re a beast too. And that beast keeps growing too. According to eMarketer, their viewership base jumped 3.6% to 132.6 million members. Traditional TV networks and channels are on the run.
File this under: Things change. Remember Flickr? The Vancouver-created photo-sharing app dominated for so many years. Long before Instagram, Snapchat and, even, Facebook. Back in 2005 the company was purchased by Yahoo! for (reportedly) $35 million dollars. Back then, this was a big deal. Well, Verizon (which bought Yahoo, AOL, etc…) just announced that they have sold Flickr to SmugMug – another (and even older) photo sharing service. You would think that nobody would care. Not true. Flickr reportedly still has more than 100 million users, who post tens of billions of photos. You might also think that this is all one, big collective shrug. Not true. What’s most interesting here is the reaction to this news. People are genuinely excited that an independent company is taking this brand back from one of the giants. A trend that may just be getting started?