(no subject)

[spatch]

Amazon's "Plog^TM" is really stupid. "It's like a blog but with a P! And it's on my Amazon front page! Golly! Internet wonders never cease!" I'll get into it more in depth later when I have time to write, but suffice to say that golly gosh gee, it's another way of them pushing the items they want to push and who'da thunk it:

Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you rated Harpo Speaks!.

Oh yes, since I once rated Harpo Marx' autobiography I'm sure to enjoy someone's "lol Michael Moore is fat lol" rebuttal book. Oh, indeed. But what's this?

Tuesday, June 22, 2004
My Life was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you bought The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose.

Now Amazon supposedly thinks that because I bought Keith Scott's wonderful account of the life and times of Jay Ward Productions, I'd juuuust happen to like Bill Clinton's memoirs?

Bull-puckey.

I'm waiting for Amazon to finally go "You know, we can drop the pretense, can't we?" and head these things with "ITEMS WE'RE JUST TRYING TO PUSH ON EVERYBODY." Because, honestly, this half-assed attempt at justification is really sad.

Comments

[subbes]

Three minutes after I signed into amazon.com today, I sent an e-mails to amazon customer service informing them that they should damn well offer a way to turn the plog off. Going through all 35 posts and removing them one-by-one is too tiring.

[sarcasma.livejournal.com]

My "plog" (*barf*) is basically whatever's just been released on DVD, regardless of genre or any other defining characteristics. It was bad enough when the recommendations were miles off... the "pl"- no, I can't even type it, ew -- sucks even more stinky sausage. Bah.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I'm sure that amazon just wants you to be aware that Bill Clinton released an autobiography. In the deadly serious world of modern media, the memoir of an obscure ex-President might not be something that made its way onto your radar.

[spatch]

And being a fan of mid-20th century American television animation, it only stands to reason I'd be slightly out of the loop when it came to politics.

It all makes sense now!

Wow!

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

I've never met anyone else before who owns "The Moose That Roared." This is fantastic!

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

I find it useful cos it also tells me when my items have shipped and such.

[spatch]

Okay, you're right, that is quite useful. Amazon should focus on that kind of usefulness and not in cross-promotional non-usefulness.

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

I think it should also tell you which webcrawlers have trawled your wish list.

Sort of a bottplog.

[yuda.livejournal.com]

I dunno. The items on my plog are a pretty decent mix of things I'd be interested in. If you've only bought a handful of items from Amazon and don't have a wishlist, then no, it's not going to make very good recommendations; it doesn't know enough about you.

I, for one, think the Plog is a damn fine idea.

[spatch]

Gooodnight, everybody!

[betweenstations.livejournal.com]

Amazon seems to read all the 'personalized marketing is the BOMB!' stuff and be too lazy to imp it as truly personalized marketing.

The affinity stuff is good, but it's not personalized, and that's what people want more and more, while maintaining some weird delusion that you can have privacy and full personalization, where privacy = vendor doesn't know everything about you. (It -can- mean 'vendor knows everything but doesn't sell the data,' but. That's rare. And if you read Amazon's policy, completely not happening there.)

[spatch]

The funny thing is I've been a frequent customer at amazon.com since at least 1998. Bought many books and DVDs and all sorts of goodies and I've been pretty good to at least rate each product after I buy it. If the best it can do after accruing so much purchase data of mine is push only the latest releases at me, I don't think it's doing a very good job.

Then again, I got nothing but MST3K recommendations for almost two years after I bought three box sets in a row, so maybe they're, uh, tweaking the recommendation-based-on-past-purchases thing.

[pecosy.livejournal.com]

I bought two MST3K videos for my brother way back when and it did the same thing - nothing but MST3K plugs for 3 years. A quick look at my plog reveals that their recommendations are based on gift purchases:

Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you bought Homeworld 2.

My Life was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you bought SWELL: A Girl's Guide To The Good Life in 2004 Engagement Calendar.

[sarcasma.livejournal.com]

Me too, I've bought tons of shit and have a wishlist that could choke a donkey, but it still thinks I just want whatever's newest on DVD.

I don't even buy mostly DVD's from them -- I buy mostly classical CDs, and books.

The plog is teh dumb.

Re: Wow!

[spatch]

It's a great book! And with such wonderful tidbits like the Moosylvania statehood movement that hit the White House at exactly the wrong time, and the rained-out Coney Island Film Festival, and the Bullwinkle puppet acting up, it is too good a book to not read.

SO EVERYBODY GO READ IT NOW YAY