A interesing fact is also, that Ebay buyers to a research at amazon.com and different forums too. It gives the market more transparency and helps people to find good offers. Well in complex social networks their are principles of mathematics such als regulative dynamics (John Nash – Nash Game Theory) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash) (cooperative and non cooperative Game Theories) (Winner of Nobel the Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences). Simply, in complex systems with many factors (such as the Internet or the market in the Internet), mechanisms are build by the users itself – to control the informations – also offers in the web. For Example: Wikipedia – everbody is able to help Wikipedia with information. The Information will be controlled by the quantity of users in the project – so mechanisms are growing like in neural networks (AI).

Thanks again for this post – greetings, Peter

What do you think has been key to their success in harnessing social interactions? Why was it that Amazon has become such a massive resource for consumer written reviews when there were other online services like Epinions.com that specifically focus on that as their core competency?

This post was written in celebration of the value of social media/Web 2.0 to the common people, and it clearly shows there is phenomenal value. But imagine reading this as a manager at Amazon? I mean, it doesn’t say, but Amazon’s share of online retail is obviously way, way smaller than the 52% who use them to read reviews. Imagine how you would feel knowing that your hard earned data was being stolen by, say, 90% of the people who benefit from their use it?

- So, for consumers who are comfortable buying online, today: Amazon is to online stores what retail stores were to online stores in the past.

That is to say, in the past, when people were still uncomfortable buying something online that they hadn’t seen with their own eyes, they’d go look at it in a local retail store, then go back home and buy it online, saving lots of money. Now, they go to Amazon for a different value–to find what other people say about a product–and then go find it elsewhere for less, saving some money.

So, that leads to a couple of thoughts:

- Amazon can be gamed by people with agendas, so even now, the reviews are suspect

- All reviews, positive and negative, are available for every visitor to see, so the temptation to game them from either side is very strong

- Reviews are increasingly important, but if you are the review hosting entity, how can you monetize it rather than be used? Or, is being used a reasonable trade off? People may use Amazon for its reviews and go away, but enough stay and buy–plus the brand awareness of being the first stop–that it all makes up for being so used.

DaveA, I’m guessing that the additional sales Amazon gets from all the people who come to their site to research still outweighs the fact that those people *could* use the review information and buy somewhere else. My guess is that the convenience of having the same site provide you with good information and the option to buy (at a pretty good price) drives a lot of extra sales.

Great discussion! I’m inclined to agree with Zephyr, that the attention Amazon gains far outweighs any help their competitors might get.

There is such a huge advantage in having people already on your site…it’s really the challenge of the web. Once you have attention, then you’re golden.

And Amazon is so far outpacing anybody else that this must have something to do with it.

I agree with Zephyr’s comment, although I have no data. Keep in mind too that (a) lots of non-book sales may be stimulated by people coming to check out book reviews and (b) the “people who bought book x also bought book Y” may be even a more effective selling tool since actual sales data are harder to “game” than reviews.

The social Site of the Internet opens new perspectives for internet marketing. A great exapmple is “viral Marketing”, using the structures of social Networks. Also, who can say if a “review” is done by a user or by a paid agency – spreeding positive comments and reviews in a system like amazon? This is also called reputation management. Simply using the structures to spreed informations in Blogs, Forums, Product Review Portal Systems etc. with different accounts and users. Advertising and Marketing Agencys use this techniques to create Hypes in the net. The Question remains – who is beliveable and how can you dissolve commercial information from private opinions? It’s on the customer / user to find out.

A Great discussion – keep on!

Greetings, Peter

I immediately go to the user reviews whenever I look at a product on Amazon. Too bad you have to wade through a ton of clutter to see them! One of my biggest peeves with Amazon is how their product detail pages display everything but the kitchen sink. Often, if there are only one or two reviews for a product, I’ll scroll by them a couple times before I even notice them.

Hello,
I have been using Amazon since 1997. I do a lot of Internet stuff, and Amazon is probably in my top 5 online companies. In fact I bought hundreds of books there, but I also sold hundreds of books there (by the way their second hand book sales in also one of many great innovations).
In answer to pepelicious, I find no such issues and browsing there to me is a walk in the park. If you want to see the reviews, it will take one second to reach them.
As this is just a comment and not a post, lol, I will just give one additional view. Think about the fact that a bestseller will have many reviews, possibly hundreds, whereas a book ranked lower then 200,000 will have none or a few. So you can only “game” the books with the least sales, and it is a clear waste of time. In other words, for the book business and probably the other ones too, it is not “game-able” by the reviews. Unless it is done at considerable expenses and easily detectable.