Net Perceptions Transforms World's Largest Bookstore into a Unique Personalized Shopping Experience; GroupLens Toolkit Gives Businesses Like Amazon.com the Power to Know Individual Customer's Needs and Increase Customer Satisfaction

Feb. 10, 1997--Readers are passionate about the books they love.

But how do they discover other books that will ignite just the right spark? Net Perceptions' GroupLens toolkit, demonstrated today for key technology executives at the Demo 97 conference, is being integrated by Amazon.com Books, the world's biggest bookstore, to help readers identify books they'll likely enjoy. The GroupLens toolkit features advanced collaborative filtering technology that measures a customer's preferences and recommends books to match that individual's tastes.

The GroupLens toolkit is like a friendly salesperson who develops a relationship with each customer, helping them find books they will like based on books they liked in the past. Behind the scenes, GroupLens matches the preferences of people to one another, drawing from a pool of titles chosen by a community of people with similar tastes.

When the GroupLens system is fully operational on the site later this spring, Amazon.com customers will be able to rate any of the books in Amazon.com Books' 1.1 million title catalog. Recommendations will be offered in a variety of subject areas, from mystery and cooking to science fiction and biography.

"The GroupLens toolkit allows Amazon.com to offer a completely new and incredibly helpful way to shop for books. Our customers will spend just a few minutes rating titles, and the toolkit will return book recommendations from thousands of other people who share their tastes and interests," said Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com. "We chose the GroupLens toolkit from Net Perceptions because their approach gives us maximum control and flexibility to integrate personalization into our site exactly as we choose."

Net Perceptions is one of a few companies personally selected to present at Demo 97, an industry-insider event that showcases the best and brightest new products and technologies. Demo 97 recognizes that Net Perceptions' groundbreaking GroupLens toolkit has pioneered a solution to the problem businesses face in developing close relationships with their customers.

"We're honored that Demo 97 extended us an invitation to show how GroupLens can help Amazon.com deliver a more personalized and relevant online experience for its customers," said Steven Snyder, chief executive officer of Net Perceptions. "Merchants such as Amazon.com have told us that they want to build customer satisfaction and generate more return visits. We're helping them by delivering accurate predictions of what their customers will like."

The GroupLens toolkit uses Adaptive Prediction, a patent-pending technology that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of any Web site. It is designed to serve customers better by "learning" from each customer interaction with a Web site, using observations about what customers say they like, as well as observations about what customers actually do online.

Net Perceptions also provides clear, well-documented APIs, allowing Web sites to easily integrate the GroupLens toolkit into existing applications. "The GroupLens toolkit API made it easy to personalize Amazon.com. The API fit seamlessly into our technology for developing our site," stated Bezos.

Net Perceptions recently received second round financial backing from Paul Allen's investment group, Vulcan Ventures, Inc., as well as from St. Paul Venture Capital, Inc. and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. In addition to Amazon.com, Net Perceptions' announced customer installations include Starwave and The SABRE Group.

About DEMO 97

Demo 97 is the leading computer industry conference focused exclusively on emerging technologies and exciting new products. The two-part conference includes General Sessions, where products are presented on stage to a wide audience of top journalists from key business and industry publications, venture capitalists, industry executives, technology industry analysts, and marketing executives, and at demo stations, where companies offer one-on-one demos to conference attendees.

About Amazon.com Books

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon.com, Inc. is headquartered in Seattle and is privately held. Amazon.com is the leading interactive retailer on the Web, with the world's largest selection of books. The Internet-only bookstore offers a catalogue of more than 1.1 million titles, easy-to-search and browse features, email services, Web-based credit card payment and direct shipping to customers.

Amazon.com's name pays homage to the Amazon River. Just as the Amazon River is more than six times the size of the next largest river in the world, Amazon.com's catalogue is more than six times the size of the largest conventional bookstore.

About Net Perceptions

Net Perceptions, Inc., a company that creates tools to build high-yield customer relationships, was incorporated in July 1996. Founders of Net Perceptions include the original team of University of Minnesota researchers who pioneered concepts and applications of collaborative filtering with the GroupLens project. Net Perceptions can be found on the World Wide Web at www.netperceptions.com .