#PrimeDay- Did I miss something?

I was so excited for Amazon Prime Day to arrive.  I have been a prime member for a long time and think that it is a great service.  The two day shipping and no sales tax hooked me.   Hearing that Amazon was going to provide Christmas in July was exciting.  Even my Mom checked in with me to see what deals I was going to score.   I was ready and even informed UPS to start their trucks...




Prime Day was here, or was it?  I went on Amazon and looked around for the exciting deals.  Where were they?   There was a bunch of stuff that really was not interesting.   I cruised the site for 5-10 minutes looking for the hidden deal- it had to be here.   NOT!  This was a bust.  Why is their box guy mascot smiling.  Is he laughing at me because this is a joke?  I was glad that I was already a prime subscriber.  Think of all the people who joined for this promotion.

I went on Twitter and quickly learned that I was not alone.   PrimeDay was a bust across 99.999% of the worlds population.  PrimeDay was such a miss for Amazon that it started trending (in a bad way) on Twitter.   I started to think about how important it is to live up to the hype advertised events.  One miss and the entire world is your critic.   Social Media can make or break you in a matter of seconds. 

So what can we learn from PrimeDay?   I give Amazon credit for trying something new.  They forced their competition to react quickly to this event to try to keep up.  Walmart and other retailers were scrambling to compete.  Amazon was clearly trailblazing in unknown territories.   However, their miss might have been worse than not hosting PrimeDay.  Amazon has now lost a lot of people who would usually use their product if they found a great deal.  Now there are a lot of people with a $99.00 subscription to a service they do not believe in.

At Microsoft, we are not afraid to fail.  We all fail.  Amazon failed with PrimeDay. They will lick their wounds and try it again.  Microsoft had challenges when we tried something new with Windows 8.  We were trying to provide a desktop and tablet interface to an audience that was not really ready for it.  There were some quick fixes that needed to happen, but we were working on a better solution- Windows 10.   Windows 10 will be the version that will get all the glory. However, Window 10 needed the failure of Window 8 to make it better.

If we are not failing, then we are not trying. Test the boundaries.   Don't play it safe.  Learn from your mistakes and improve!


Go out and experience the world and don't be afraid to fail.  If Amazon can do it, so can you!. 

Until next time.  

-Goggle Man OUT!