Bezos the Brilliant

Well, it’s here. The future. Or at least, the future as Internet entrepreneur Jeff Bezos sees it.

In the first few days after Thanksgiving, when talk in the retail industry tends to focus on Walmart, Target, Black Friday, etc., the CEO of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com, flipped the script.

Instead of the usual talking points, Bezos had everyone discussing Amazon’s idea to make online shopping even easier by using autonomous, flying drones to deliver packages.

Bezos explained the idea, called “Amazon Prime Air,” while being featured for a segment on the venerable CBS news program “60 Minutes.”

The television show, as usual, aired on a Sunday evening, a day ahead of the busiest Internet shopping day of the year, particularly for Amazon, which received 300 online orders per second on Cyber Monday in 2012.

Talk about a reveal. And never mind legalities as far as the FAA is concerned, when it will happen and other reality checks for such a perceived pie-in-the-sky idea. Bezos is brilliant, and in the world of CEOs, he has to be regarded as one of the great innovators.

Some retail analysts have gone as far to say that all Bezos did was hijack the 24/7 news cycle by talking about something that doesn’t exist — and CBS fell for it.

But it’s hard to disagree with cold, hard numbers. And according to data from the social search and analytics company Topsy, the television appearance had people talking about Amazon.

Tweets for “Amazon” increased by 180 percent between Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, the day of the television appearance.

Compared to competitors, tweets for
@Amazon increased by 238 percent, compared with 60 percent for @Walmart and 19 percent for @Target. 

It sort of begs the question: Was Bezos’ television appearance more about a bold new idea, or about driving sales for Cyber Monday?