Amazon Dabbles with ‘ProductWiki’

Amazon has become one of the de facto locations for customers to write up their experiences with products—even if they didn’t buy them from Amazon. Now Amazon is toying with even more customer interaction in the form of ‘ProductWiki,’ a collaboratively-edited description page for each product.

We are fine with fancy features, we guess, but what role does a wiki on product pages that already have user comments serve? If one wanted to put a link to a product update, the comments section would serve (even if it is, technically, for reviews). And if the product information description field is incorrect, who’s to say that the average customer will trust the information in the wiki more than they trust the product description page?

We’re not pooh-poohing it in general—more ways to involve the customers is more better—but it hardly seems a revolution.

If you want to try it out, it should be in the ‘Customers who viewed this book also viewed’ section, but not every user is reporting success in accessing it. (Similar to when Gold Box launched in waves.)

Amazon’s customer collaboration [Customer Evangelists]
Amazon’s customer collaboration, Pt. 2 [Customer Evangelists]

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