Hey Friends!

This week is a bit more a social experiment, and I’d like your input. As some of you may have heard, Amazon is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary next week on July 15th and announced it would have “Prime Day“. Starting at midnight and running 24 hours, Amazon will be offering seven main specials throughout the day and lightning deals on clothing, electronics, movies, and more as often as every ten minutes! However, Prime Day is only open to Amazon Prime members.

“But Justin, I’m not a Prime member!”

Okay, go sign up for a Prime account! Sign up for a free 30-day trial and get access. BOOM.

While this sounds very exciting, I’m not sure how I feel about Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos claiming that Prime Day will be “bigger than Black Friday” or Alibaba’s Singles Day. I mean, that’s a bold statement, Bezos. This better be some incredible stuff you’ve got…If it just turns out to be last year’s Blu-Rays, cameras, GPS gadgets, and tablets, I’m gonna be mad.

After a little sniffing around, it seems I’m not the only skeptic. Time magazine is fairly convinced that Amazon is after two things:

1. Getting more people to become Prime members, whether they forget to cancel their 30-day trials or get addicted to the free two-day shipping
2. Crushing their potential competitor, Jet.com which rolls out later this year.Jet is still in beta testing, but should launch publicly later this year. Jet’s model is a yearly fee ($50) with an incentive-based price scale; items would be 5%-6% lower than anywhere online and even lower if members agree to certain terms – giving their email address, using their debit card, promising not to return an item, etc. Personally, I think the idea is awesome.

For this week, I want to hear from YOU:

Will you be engaging in Prime Day? What are you hoping to get? What kind of prices are you expecting? Do you think it’s going to be bigger than Black Friday? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Next week, we’ll discuss how Prime Day went!

Justin Brasher, Brash Librarian (and Prime Day shopper)