Amazon's holiday numbers include a couple of mind-blowers

Amazon issued a post-Christmas press release early this morning claiming in the headline that its customers "Shopped at Record Levels this Holiday Season with Billions of Items Ordered Worldwide." Among the stats that Yahoo editor-at-large Brian Sozzi finds most significant are that 1) Amazon got 5 million folks to either start trials of Prime or sign up for memberships during the period and, 2) that "the number of items that were delivered with Prime Free One-Day and Prime Free Same-Day Delivery nearly quadrupled compared to the same time period last holiday season, making this Amazon’s fastest holiday yet," according to the release.