Many April Fool posts today, including that Amazon.com has created a “retro” home page:
It looks surprisingly usable, but sadly it doesn’t actually function as it’s just an image that clears when clicked. But it did prompt me to wonder if I was using Amazon.com that long ago – the answer surprisingly is “yes”! My first Amazon purchase was in May 1998, a technical book which presumably I could never have found at Barnes & Noble.
I found it interesting then to look my evolving purchase history over the years. I used to buy quite a lot of books from Amazon but that tailed off and then stopped in 2010 (not a coincidence surely that the iPad killed the book for me!)
I didn’t buy my first music CD till 2000, and I used to buy quite a lot – Amazon is great for getting hold of unusual music, or stuff only available in England. That’s even more true for videos; I bought my first DVD in 2000 too, and still today buy an occasional one (again, if it exists only in DVD format or is completely unavailable in the US market – my DVD player has no trouble with English format DVDs).
My first non-media purchase was in 2004 (soap!) but since 2011 those items are the most common purchases; I get quite a lot of clothing, wash/shave products and car care stuff from Amazon now. It’s also pretty clear when I got my Amazon Prime account, with Amazon spending jumping by a factor of five!
I don’t know about you, but I find these insights into “old” behaviors to be fascinating (like my previous Shazam post) …
M&I / GBMINI 