[demallien]

I think he was referring to the fact that people talked about Amazon, even outside of geek circles. It was the first big online retailer - before that, people just didn't buy things online. Amazon changed that by generating suffcient word-of-mouth buzz. That buzz in return allowed Amazon an easier job negotiating with publishers to distribute their books, which made Amazon cheaper than bricks and mortar stores, which increased the buzz, which allowed them to negotiate even better prices.

[FaceKicker]

I mentioned word-of-mouth buzz in my post, but it didn't make sense to me that that could be the reason as Ben and Jerry's ice cream has the same thing going for it (as an anecdotal example, I never bought it until my girlfriend bought a couple flavors and I tasted them and found out how much tastier than generic ice cream it was).

And even if Amazon has more of this word-of-mouth going for it than Ben and Jerry's, I would think this would be a result of their implementation (i.e., it's a well-done site and that's why people tell their friends), rather than something inherent to its business model which is what the article is talking about.