Amazon Web Services is now storing 2 trillion objects in the S3 storage cloud. This is up from one trillion in June 2012. Each object ranges at between zero to 5TB in size. The service peaks at about 1.1 million requests per second.
Songza is a streaming music service that has curated playlists based on the mood or time of day. Songza has developed apps for iOS, Android, and the Kindle Fire. The company has raised $3.82 million according to an SEC filing. Previously known as Amie Street, Songza is led by CEO Elias Roman and is based in Long Island, New York. Some of the playlists moods include “Keeping Calm & Mellow,” “Boosting Your Energy,” and “Fun & Funky Pick-me-ups.”
Goodreads is a website that allows users to search an extensive database of books, annotations, and reviews. Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched out of beta in January 2007 by Otis and Elizabeth Chandler. Goodreads users have the ability to register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. Goodreads users can also create groups of book suggestions and discussions. Back in July 2012, Goodreads reported that they had 10 million members, 20 million monthly visitors, and 30 employees. In December 2007, Goodreads raised around $750,000 in angel investment and then they raised $2 million in funding from True Ventures in 2009. Goodreads generated revenue when a user clicked on their website to an online bookseller to make a purchase. Earlier this week, Amazon.com revealed that they have acquired Goodreads.
Earlier this week, we wrote about how Amazon.com will be launching a new pilot based on the movie Zombieland. This series should not be confused with an upcoming series coming to HBO called Silicon Valley being created by the guy behind Office Space and Beavis and Butt-Head, Mike Judge. Betas will be about four computer geeks and their quest to achieve fame.
For those of you that have seen the movie Zombieland, you may recall that it is about a student trying to reach his family in Ohio that partners with a tough guy trying to find the last Twinkie. They are joined by two sisters that are trying to get to an amusement park. Now a Zombieland TV series is going to premiere on Amazon Prime.
Earlier today, TechCrunch reported a rumor that Amazon is working on a $99 Kindle Fire HD which would have a 7-inch screen. TechCrunch’s source was an not cited. ”It’s not happening–we are already at the lowest price points possible for that hardware,” said Amazon in a statement.
Patrick Wensink is the author of the book “Broken Piano For President.” The book spent around one week at the top of Amazon.com’s best-seller list, surpassing “Hunger Games” at that time. Getting to the top of Amazon.com’s best sellers is an amazing feat, but apparently it does not pay as well as you would think. The check that came in was $12,000.
Amazon.com wants to have control of a dozens of new generic top-level Internet domain names. The generic top-level domains (gTLD) would end with the suffixes .book, .read, and .author. Critics at The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers say that this level of influence could be anti-competitive according to the Wall Street Journal.
