Did Amazon over-hype its "Prime Day" of deals?
Amazon Prime Day, which celebrates the company's 20th birthday, promised that Wednesday would be 24 hours of "more deals than Black Friday" with new discounts added every 10 minutes.
Amazon teased a handful of the deals -- which are exclusive for members of its $99 per year free-shipping Prime program -- like a 32-inch TV for $75 and a Chromebook laptop for $199. Rival Wal-Mart as well as smaller retailers like Newegg responded by planning their own day of discounts.
But hordes of peeved Twitter users felt let down by the deals as of Wednesday morning
Related: The Best Amazon Prime Day and Wal-Mart Deals
One joke echoing around the social network suggested Prime Day was nothing more than a garage sale for Amazon.
Several users joked about some of the strange or "lame" products being offered.
Others were frustrated by the quick sellout of some hot items.
Some would-be shoppers who spied deals that were still available complained of technical issues when trying to make the purchase.
But a good contingent of shoppers were happy with the deals they scored.
Amazon shook off the criticisms in a statement to NBC News: "Prime Day has been exciting so far ... We have years of experience with these types of events and we stagger the deals to make sure the fun will last through tonight."
Related: Amazon 'Prime Day' Deal List Teases Released
Whether or not shoppers agree the deals were "exciting," Prime Day has generated a lot of online chatter.
As of 1:30 p.m. ET, Twitter users had mentioned the #primeday hashtag more than 65,000 times -- and the social network expects that to increase throughout the day, a press representative said. Facebook did not reply to a request for comment on activity on its network.
Later on Wednesday, Adobe released consumer sentiment stats based on 4 million comments on blogs, Twitter, Reddit and other online properties. About 50 percent of overall Amazon Prime Day sentiment "relates to sadness, with much of the disappointed chatter focused on the lack of blockbuster deals," Adobe said. But 23 percent of the comments were joy-related, 19 percent expressed admiration and 8 percent showed surprise.
Amazon said later on Wednesday that many customers took advantage of the deals: Prime members bought tens of thousands of media-streaming Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets and 1,200 TVs for $999 that sold out in less than 10 minutes.