Amazon list shilling
October 3, 2002
Did we know that some Amazon lists are made by companies? For example, David Payne is an eBusiness Channel Manager at Viking, and has made over a thousand "So you'd like to..." guides and almost as many Listmania lists on Amazon.
As a result, Viking products show up on almost any memory-related search, and it's got to be helping their sales on the site significantly. There's a vaguely astroturfing feeling to it, but it's clearly not duplicitous or against Amazon's policies. I'm curious to see if any other companies are doing this.
12:30 AM
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As an Amazon freelance writer, I know that most of my Amazon editors have their own "So you'd like to..." and Listmania lists, directing shoppers to the hot promotional items in their department. Not quite the same, but an interesting interpretation of how the features can be used.
I think Amazon should ban companies from being able to do this, it's almost like free advertising. They should make these companies pay for 'relevant keyword result priority listings'. If that makes any sense... I'm going to stop thinking now.
dammit. it's just too disturbing. it detracts from the whole 'word of the consumer' look&feel that whole list section is supposed to try and create!
Right now, Amazon all-site and "electronics only" searches for "flash card," "memory," "smartmedia," and "memory stick" reveal nothing Viking-related in the results or the "You may also like..." sidebar (although "flash memory" did show Viking under the Zshops category). Even so, the "You may also like..." section, at least on my 1024x768 resolution, is so unobtrusive as to be irrelevant (much like the "sponsored links" on Google). I have issues with Amazon as much as the next guy, but while conspiracy theories make compelling Oliver Stone movies, on the printed page, they read like flummery without hard evidence (or screenshots). Of course, given that I have cookies disabled and I am deliberately not logged in, the question here is whether you purchased a Viking product from Amazon lately. (Case in point: When I log in to Amazon, I am always given a "recommended" list of Ian McEwan novels that I've already read, largely because I ordered most of my McEwan collection from Amazon and there were a few I bought from other places.) So the question is whether this is a targeted user-based form of collaborative filtering that the guys at Viking are cognizant about or just plain coincidence.
This is an outrageous exploitation of what
was supposed to be an open community forum
for buyers to reach out to other buyers.
For more examples of how companies exploit
open forums, buy my book: "How Companies
Exploit Open Forums" on Amazon.com