Amazon.com: in focus

Amazon made customer reviews integral to what they do. Shame they gave up there.

Amazon = no-clue pain

Despite having unfeasibly large amounts of coverage in Google (only recently surpassed by Wikipedia) and despite enormous quantities of ‘online service functionality’ and a ‘commitment to innovation’ they really are about as clueless about how to conversationalise what they are doing as they were on the day when they sold their very first book.

Algorithmic fetishists

Their tools, their infrastructure, the richness of the range of resources, seem to betray the same  ‘algorithmic fetish’ as Google.

Up the Amazon without a paddle?

Have you noticed that Google, in the Wikipedia era, doesn't seem to favour Amazon as much as they used to in the early days?

Wikipedia feels like it answers the searchers' question, where Amazon feels like it is just selling stuff.

So you can see why Google might want to give Wikipedia better positioning.

But Google does everything by algorithm.

So what is it about Amazon's pages that informs Google's algorithms that Amazon is 'less deserving of page rank' than it was?

Is it structure or content?

And how does this affect the rest of us in Social Media Land?

Humans and the voice of experience please

They could get away with a far smaller investment in technology if they used the tools that they have already developed as a means of introducing their own human experiences into the visitor and purchaser interaction process (their review process feels cold and detached).

Soul, POV and integration deficit

They need real prominence management, they need news and community integration, they need an editorial soul.

Shurely shome mishtake??

How can the thing which occupies the largest proportion of Google results-list real-estate be under performing?

A thought experiment

Imagine what a warm, friendly Amazon would be like.

But what is it now?

An appalling, if promising mess.

Amazon - what kind of media company are you?