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Amazon Goes Wiki
StWaldo writes "Amazon.com has added a 'ProductWiki' to some of their item pages. Wikified items seem to be limited to certain categories, DVDs being one un-wikied realm. Adding Wikiness to the site is just the latest in new participatory activities Amazon has adopted, along with tags and customer discussions." From the article: "So Amazon's gradually allowing you, along with your Wish List, your purchases, your clickstream, and, if you sell anything on Amazon, how good your reputation is--to build up a pretty detailed database of what you like (or don't) and what's important to you. I don't know what Amazon will do with this--fortunately, it seems to have a pretty light touch with how it uses what it knows about you--or what it will allow us to do with all this data. But as it grows, it could become a pretty powerful profile."
The Amazon spokesman added that the wiki policy required contributions to be strictly NPOV, except for positive comments.
Somewhere, somehow, there is a hurricane of advertising just waiting to annoy the Hell out of you. They will be marketing things like Star Wars collectables and case mods among other geeky things that you bought or searched for on Amazon. You will not be able to run, you will not be able to hide, Jamster will want to give you the latest Chewbacca ringtone.
You should have seen the rejected names list:
CashStream
Shut Up and Give Us Your Earnings
Christmas... Pony Up
Amazon Love Linky Winky
Obligatory Purchase
Comsume, You Gluttons!
Clown Anus Portal
Ha! We Have One-Click Patented! You Don't!
Real-Time Stock Link! Watch Stock Rise After Each Purchase
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
You think that's bad?
My company recently purchased another company for several billion dollars and one of the employees sent some sort of an email that was posted on our internal corporate page. It was referring to the culture of our company and how wonderful the language we used was.
One of the comments they made was that "doubleclicking" an idea is brilliant! Where "doubleclicking" means that you want to look at an idea in more detail or discuss something further. As in "let's take a few minutes to doubleclick that interesting idea before we move on".
What the HELL? Who the hell would use such an idiotic statement outside of . . . MAYBE marketing? If you talk like that, you might as well be one of those annoying tools that refers to not being able to find your screw driver as "I looked for a philips in my toolbox but it seems to be 404".
GAAAAAAAH.