I was just thinking about the many features missing from Amazon's Your Media Library, a list of the books, CDs and videos you have purchased through Amazon. If I were Amazon, I would recognize the potential revenue in letting people explore the collection beyond search and recommendations. I bet there is a significant group who want to have more options in culture hunting and don't mind taking a more active role. The features are available in the Delicious Library tool, but the threshold is too high: scanning each item in your library with a webcam and downloaded software. Amazon already has the majority of my data, I just can't use it for anything worthwhile.
Two simple features already being used at other sites:
- Allow users to connect based on similar taste like Last.fm's "neighbors"
- Create the option of viewing your books' relation to other books in a graph like the Touchgraph Amazon Browser or CNET's Big Picture. Like Del.icio.us and Last.fm, the point is that your taste might be fragmented so it helps to connect to others through individual URLs and songs as well as by overall "closeness" to another user.
Your wish has (sorta) been granted. They've added a "Shared Collections" and "Discover" tab.
No tag maelstrom at the moment, but you can browse people's collections.
Have you seen LibraryThing's Zeitgeist?
Posted by: Kevin | May 18, 2007 at 09:55 AM