Amazon prime

Amazon has practically won the e-commerce race and much of that isn't simply because of the convenience of online shopping. Its subscription-based Prime membership is a major factor in its success, providing exclusive perks that even go beyond the act of buying things. Amazon's biggest rival isn't taking the threat sitting down, of course, and Walmart may soon launch its own Walmart+ loyalty program within just a few weeks.

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Amazon Prime Video has finally added a feature that has already been available on a number of competing platforms: user profiles. With these, multiple people in the same household can separate their viewing habits, preventing someone from having their personalized recommendations messed up when another person views their own favorite shows. The profiles are only rolling out on certain devices to start with.

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Microsoft has long been trying to populate its app store, pushing every development framework, from UPWs to PWAs, to entice developers to jump in. There have been, however, some movement going in the opposite direction, with developers and brands exiting the Microsoft Store instead. That store just got one big addition to its list of apps but while the Amazon Prime Video app does offer some convenience, it curiously comes with an undisclosed limitation as well.

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There has been a surge in the use of video streaming services, putting the video-on-demand market in the spotlight again. But while it has long had its own VoD platform, Amazon Prime Video's name still lagged behind Netflix and even behind the Disney+ upstart. Now it seems that the e-commerce giant is coming up with a new strategy to get the upper hand, one that ironically bets on one of the most traditional forms of video consumption around, linear TV.

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With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping a lot of us inside at the moment, there are a bunch of people who are turning to streaming for entertainment. One website that's probably seen a big uptick in traffic is Twitch, which got its start as a video game streaming website but has since branched out to many different categories. Last month, Amazon rolled out a new feature called Watch Parties to all Twitch partners in the US in direct response to the stay-at-home orders issued by governments across the country, and today, it's getting a pretty major expansion.

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Late last year, streaming platform Twitch announced a new upcoming feature called Watch Parties that enables groups of people to watch the same show together, though they're located in different places from each other. The feature was first tested with a small number of creators who could use Watch Parties to stream select Prime Video content with their communities.

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Amazon may be forced to delay its Prime Day event this year over the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has caused a massive uptick in orders through its service. The company went on a hiring spree to keep up with the demand last month, also temporarily increasing pay rates for both warehouse workers and grocery packers. Amid all of that, the company had to pause its Prime Pantry service due to an overwhelming number of orders.

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Several Amazon employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at shipment and/or fulfillment centers in the United States. Amazon seems to be enacting quarantine measures for these employees and asking that employees who had any "close contact" with their infected co-workers to self-quarantine for 14 days. There have also been notable delays in shipments of non-essential items in the last couple of weeks due to COVID-19 and the fallout.

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Amazon has made a bunch of children's programming available to stream for free, meaning you no longer need an Amazon Prime Video subscription to watch it. The content is a mixture of third-party and original shows from Amazon, including well-known offerings like Peppa Pig and Arthur, as well as newer things Just Add Magic and Pete the Cat.

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For a number of years now, Amazon Prime Video has been attempting to go toe-to-toe with other big streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but all this time, it's been missing a feature that the other two offer: user profiles. While Netflix and Hulu allow you to create profiles for each user in the household - in turn giving each user their own set of recommendations and watch lists - Amazon has not. It looks like that's all beginning to change.

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Amazon will throttle Prime Video streaming in an attempt to alleviate pressure on coronavirus-hammered European internet providers, the latest on-demand service to trim bitrates. The move comes after Netflix and YouTube confirmed that they would be addressing bandwidth use by their streaming, after EU officials asked for help ensuring that internet connections weren't overloaded during self-isolation.

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Amazon offers multiple services to its customers, one of which is called Prime Pantry. With this, Prime customers can order household goods and non-fresh groceries to have them sent in a giant box directly to their doorstep. In an update on this service today, Amazon revealed that it is facing a huge amount of demand for this service and as a result, it has been forced to temporarily suspend Prime Pantry.

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