Cruising Inside Amazon

"BMVP2000"

The phrase sits there on the giant monitors, and 2,000 Amazonians packing the Seattle Westin for a quarterly "all hands" meeting listen raptly while Jeff Bezos explains what it means. There are two types of businesses, he tells the troops: baby businesses, which need growth and feeding, and adult businesses, which must pay their own way. This brings him to B, M and V, which stand for books, music and video, Amazon's three oldest product lines. And the P is the news, for this trinity is nearing adulthood. "By the end of the year 2000," Bezos says, "we're going to make them profitable."

The troops are silent. Stunned. Amazon, profitable? It's autumn 1999. For years these people have been racing toward a horizon that no one, save perhaps their utopian-futurist boss, even really sees. They know much of the Silicon Valley/Wall Street/media complex believes the commodification of online retailing will lay their company to waste. Amazon the Web's golden child, darling of NASDAQ day traders who raise its market cap even faster than the company bleeds money, is also Amazon the avatar of all that may be ephemeral and fraudulent about the dotcom revolution. Now Bezos has named a date one year hence that will be the time they find out whether they're going to make it or not. A chance, after all those 16-hr. workdays, for the company actually to fail.

Their fearless leader notes their angst and offers a beneficent smile. "You can cheer," Bezos says. So the troops cheer. Imagine it. Amazon, profitable.

"I think we all agree," says Mara Friedman, "that a groundhog at a podium is funny."

"What's he doing at a podium?" her boss, John Moe, wonders.

"Um, he's lecturing on shadows and diffraction..."

"It's, like, a groundhog convention?"

"A groundhog convention," Friedman says, going with it. "You can't go wrong with a groundhog convention."

This Thursday afternoon the e-Cards crew is sitting around a conference table, trying to make one another laugh. Today's subjects are office humor and holidays in February. A "Valentine's Day, My Ass" card for lonely hearts? Possibly. A motivational groundhog speaker? Probably. A support group for obscure Presidents? "'I passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but do I even get a tire ad?'" Absolutely.

"This is terrible," Moe warns, "but O.K.--guy in a bathrobe in a lounge chair watching TV. But he's in an office cubicle. 'I think Johnson is taking this casual Friday thing too far!'"

Silence. Finally, someone groans.

"It's kind of New Yorker 10 years ago," Moe admits.

"Maybe if you put Marmaduke in there," Kirk Anderson offers.

"Ooh," moans Susan Benson, Amazon's editor in chief. "That was cruel."

This is ground zero of the New Economy? At age five, Earth's Biggest Bookstore is now Earth's Biggest Selection, in keeping with Bezos' plan for world domination. Meaning what, exactly? Well, in a sense, Amazon isn't about technology or even commerce. Any moron can open an online store. The trick is showing millions of customers such a good time that they come back every few days for the next 50 years. Amazon is, like every other site on the Web, a content play.