Amazon.com briefly inaccessible for Black Friday

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), the world's largest Internet retailer, just ran a promotion for the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming system for next to nothing (all things considered). The pricetag? $100 allegedly for the first 1,000 consumers. But the Amazon.com website suffered under a load of traffic and was partially inaccessible this past "Black" Friday due to overwhelming traffic. Ouch.

Yes, these were Xbox 360 core systems, but still -- $100? That is a bonafide bargain. Why would Amazon.com offer such a good bargain here on a system that definitely costs more than $100 (to Amazon.com?).

This is an example of letting customers pick and choose which bargains they think are the best. So, the choices apparently were these:

* 1,000 Xbox 360 Core Systems for $100 each
* 2,500 Mongoose dual-suspension bikes for $30 each
* 2,000 Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses Interactive Genevieve Dolls for $10 each
* One-year of Amazon Prime plus a $100 promotional certificate to Amazon's Toy Department for $40

Not a bad slew of offers, really. Although the Xbox 360 offer won out, Amazon.com went ahead and offered all four offers to customers anyway. Was the retailer trying to gain "mindshare" for the upcoming holiday shopping season? Most likely - and who could blame them? It was a good move on Amazon.com's part, with traffic to prove it. I wonder if they will be doing this again before mid-December comes around?