Fergie's Tech Blog

Shoppers Become Venters on Amazon.com

A New York Times article by Tom Zeller Jr., via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

In a limited experiment begun this month, Amazon.com began allowing about half of its registered customers to put and view "tags" on products - essentially words or short phrases that act like virtual Post-it notes.

It is designed to help shoppers mark items for later consideration - "gift for mom," for example - or to classify products by some personal notation: "exercise music," perhaps, or "wedding tunes."

A survey of recent tags - which, unless they are specifically made private, are designed to be viewed by the public - reveals that snarky Internet shoppers have quickly turned Amazon.com's tagging system into digital graffiti.

"Boring," is one tag recently attached to Madonna's new album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor."

"Wait for the DVD Combo," is another.

And then there is simply, "Yawn."

posted by Fergie @ 11/21/2005 05:02:00 PM