Amazon Finally Gets Around To Launching Semi-Mysterious Wiki Offering
from the mystery-solved dept
Well over a year ago, there were various sightings of the mysterious Amazon "ProductWiki" which would let people create and edit pages about various products. Last month, they apparently finally did a quiet launch of the offering. Of course, there's already a company out there named ProductWiki, and they probably weren't all that thrilled with Amazon's naming choice. Either way, Rogers Cadenhead wrote in to let us know that he's spotted a new service on Amazon called Amapedia, that basically looks like their attempt to perhaps rebrand the ProductWiki concept (though, they still have a website discussing their own ProductWiki). Randomly, if you do a Google search on the name Amapedia, you come up with the resume of an intern who claims he did coding work on Amapedia for Amazon back in 2005. So, it sounds like perhaps that was the original name, but it's bounced around a bit since then. No matter what, it's an interesting idea as a way to try to build up additional info about a product beyond just the typical list of reviews. Like any wiki, though, it all depends on whether or not people use it. Amazon certainly has a lot of users, though, and has done a good job building up a community of reviewers. The trick is converting them to being Amapedians as well.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
As to Amapedia, it might address a problem I've been seeing with Amazon's reader reviews. When you see a gushing write up on a text, then see that the reviewer has done the same for all that author's books (with, perhaps, a couple other authors from the same publisher tossed in), the credibility off all those stars takes a real hit. If Amapedia provides an opportunity to call reviewers on shilling for their buddies, I'm all for it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ProductWiki?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ProductWicked
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Forget it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Forget it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]