Adventures in Tech

In an era where most retailers are trying to decrease their physical presence, Amazon is doing the opposite   by opening physical bookstores across the US. I visited one last weekend, and was very impressed with the genius of using the store to promote Amazon services and devices. First, unlike most bookstores that carry books on nearly every subject in the Dewey decimal system, the Amazon store carries a much smaller collection of books that are bestselling amongst customers in the geographical area. There were best sellers in fiction, art, cooking, business, self-improvement, health, children’s books, popular science, and that’s it. The pricing model was genius: if you have a prime membership you get the Amazon discounted price, and if you don’t you pay the book’s list price. My guess is that this will drive prime memberships as store patrons will opt to become prime members to nab the books they like at a discount. Second, the store has prominent displays of the Kindle...

Recommendation systems are in wide use today, and Amazon's website is a prime example of that use.  In addition to the recommendations on the site, whenever I buy a new Kindle book, I receive emails with recommendations for other items I would be interested in. The recommendations are usually spot-on, and I end up buying more Kindle books, and the cycle continues. Recently I noticed that whenever I finish a Kindle book, Amazon sends me an email with related books that I might be interested in, which is pretty cool if you ignore the fact that an algorithm is watching when you finish a book, and triggers a recommendation email to entice you to read more. The feature might have been in place for some time, and I might not have noticed it, were it not for a very long book that I was reading on and off over the last year. After I was done, I received an email recommendation for other books by the same author, equally as long. Even though the recommendations are good, I am sure I am...