Amazon.com experiences outage, effects sellers

BANGALORE, INDIA: Online shoppers' stop Amazon.com experienced a widespread outage on Tuesday that lasted for more than three hours, causing tension for the users.

According to CNET, the site displayed blank or partial pages instead of product listings and product photographs. Searching for items often didn't work, and customers' shopping carts and saved item lists were temporarily displayed as empty.

Also read: Penguin Amazon resolve e-book pricing for Kindle

“We are currently experiencing an issue that is impacting customers' ability to place orders on the Amazon.com website,” said the post on an Amazon seller community form.

According to the report, Amazon, which has an annual revenue of nearly $27 billion, faces a potential loss of an average of $51,400 a minute when it's site is offline. Amazon shares closed down 7.8 per cent.

Twitter seemed to be the first place to learn about what was being hashtagged as #amazonfail by many tweeters. One tweet read: "Amazon is down. Retreat to your bunkers. Arm yourselves. Remember that cannibalism is a good way to prevent potential zombies."

Meanwhile, Amazon.com had recently announced a new update to Kindle application, which allows readers to enjoy the benefits of embedded video and audio clips in Kindle e-books on iPad and iPhone.