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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."
if it was 180 solutions or gator who had an application that collected this level of information we would call it spyware, especially if the data was used in a commercial context to target the individual, but its all there to "help" us right ?
notes the Amazon(TM) search box installed with Firefox by default
the article is about amazon building up information about you and your preferences. this leads to "silos" that do not interoperate. can this be shared with ebay, or other sites so that you don't have to teach all media commerce sites what types of things you like? no. perhaps a community based repository for preferences makes more sense. watch dick hardt's message from oscon - it just makes sense.
http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
When I was young, we made mistakes and thankfully most of them are buried in unwritten-history and with college buddies I don't see anymore.
Nowadays everything you have written on-line or maybe every site you ever visited is recorded.
Gods know how the Star Wars collectible will come back to haunt you, but I can imagine a scenario during a local election where your opponent shouts, "he collects dolls and plays with them in his bedroom!".
Reminds of how Representative Claude Pepper of some southern state, lost an election when he opponent charged, "he practises nepotism with his niece in his office".
I keep an Amazon wish list. Given that I have a family, mortgage, loan payments, etc I often don't have the money to buy the things I want when I see them. I also have a poor memory for that sort of thing, so I keep the list so as to not forget what it was that I wanted.
Of course, I rarely get round to actually buying anything on my list, but that's another matter.
I also know someone who runs a forum-based website with a fair number of users who keeps an amazon wishlist. From time to time people will buy him stuff on it, as a way to say thanks for providing the site (which he does free of charge and in his own time).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I'm sure you can add warnings all day to an title listed as the #55,186 best seller in music. I'm curious to see someone do that sort of thing with a popular title. My experience with Amazon's review features has been that I can rant about unpopular titles all day and those comments hang around, which reinforces the idea that they allow positive and negative reviews. Obviously biased comments, and ones that are negative about the topic of the book, seem to persist as well, also reinforcing that they're allowed. But try to put detailed warnings in about problems with a popular title, well those can silently go *poof*.
Details: I've written many reviews about stock trading books. I've now tried to submit a review talking about exactly what's wrong with Michael Covel's "Trend Trading", ranked #1,415 in books, three times, each time changing the text around a bit. Every time it's dissapeared quickly afterward. Someone is editing out "+5 insightful" negative comments about this book, while leaving those unlikely to dissuade a buyer alone. It's all very curious.