THINK ABOUT THIS THE NEXT TIME YOU ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON....... WASHINGTON — So that’s how you land an exclusive interview with President Obama. Employees of Amazon, which scored a coup by securing a rare one-on-one interview with the president for its journalism outlet Tuesday, donated more than $116,000 to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than four times as much as the roughly $25,000 that the Internet giant’s workers gave to Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Obama and Amazon also have a business relationship. Not only does Amazon peddle Obama’s books, but its Amazon Web Services helped build the high-tech data storage and retrieval system for the Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation. “During the campaign, the AWS solution helped facilitate the fund-raising of hundreds of millions of dollars, prioritized millions of phone calls and coordinated thousands of volunteers,” Amazon boasts on its Web site. Amazon has helped Obama in other ways, as well. Before Obama’s speech about his economic plan at an Amazon warehouse in Tennessee, the company announced it was hiring more than 5,000 new full-time workers at its warehouses across the country. The move will increase Amazon’s workforce by about 25 percent, as it expands its network across the country and strengthens its control of the online retail marketplace. Obama’s appearance on Amazon served as a ringing endorsement at a time when traditional publishers are balking at the company’s virtual online monopoly. Amazon also discounted Obama’s books on the day of the speech and offered customers “super-saver shipping” if they ordered within six hours of the discount, the Washington Times reported. The price of the paperback version of Obama’s 2004 book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” was slashed from $14.95 to $10.76. The discount was expected to jump-start sales of Obama’s one-time best seller. However, Obama’s exclusive interview for Kindle Singles flopped with most of the megaretailer’s online shoppers. By late afternoon yesterday, more than half of the reviews posted on its Web site had panned the interview by Kindle Singles editor David Blum. Of 87 reviews, the Obama interview got the lowest rating of one star from 52 readers, compared with 28 who gave it the highest five-star review, and five who checked four stars. “I am going to boycott Amazon for a couple of weeks for this one,” wrote John Rrister, who gave the roughly 15-page interview a one-star rating. “I would rather do business with companies who remain nonpolitical.” Obama was the second subject of the Kindle Singles Interview series, which premiered last week with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 13:12:21 +0000
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