Related Books:
Amazon has further tangled and interconnected its product pages by adding comments to its customer reviews. Amazon also now allows you to search across Customer Reviews and “Listmania” lists.
- The comments on reviews up the interactivity quotient on Amazon pages by several notches, turning the comments into the equivalent of a topical blog with dozens of authors all writing about a particular book. It also alleviates the previously frustrating inability to correct or add to information posted in earlier reviews. I had to dig around to find some examples of the new comments in action. Just as political books are among the most frequently reviewed, they are also now getting the most comments (if troll-like.) For example, have a look at the dedicated page for a review of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival, currently in the news because Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez brandished it during his fiery Anti-Bush speech at the UN on Wednesday. Amazon has unleashed a free-for-all, but I applaud them for it. Why not let people communicate about individual books? Perhaps something good will come of it.
- The Customer Reviews search, meanwhile, probably has some value if you are either trying to drill deeper into what a particular book is all about – for example, a search for the word “Oprah” in the reviews of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections – or trying to dig up information across Amazon’s whole catalog that may not be evident using the standard search – like this search for “desert island book.”
- The Listmania search allows for similar fun, if less serendipity.
