Plog.

31 July 04

I just happened upon my Amazon Plog — a cross between product/customer information and a blog. Here is how Amazon describes their new service:

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog.

It's intersting to note that as an example of what blogs are Amazon includes a short list from Boing Boing to Defecetive Yeti and Six Apart to Andrew Sullivan.

In almost Kottke fashion, the Plog lists product information/reviews with one liner style posts notifying me when products have been released or order status information such as shipping date and expected delivery. Each post includes a yes/no form to indicate if the post was useful along with a link to clear, or delete, the entry from the Plog.

While I like what Amazon has done there are a few things I would like to see from the new service (it's listed as being in beta). For starters I have to be logged in to see the Plog, it's not something I can share easily. I can't link to any of the entries without also passing along my account information (which is not something I would do). I'd also like to link to an entry and have it automatically include my associate ID automatically. That should increase associate links ten fold alone.

And finally, it would be nice to have a way to syndicate an entry to Airbag through some type of feed ala Google text ads — sans the preformatted look and feel.

6 Responses to “Plog.”
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Aaron — 02:05 on 07.31.04#
 

I guess it's true what they say.

Mitch — 05:11 on 07.31.04#
 

Indeed, seems like industry is trying a number of things to cash in on the blog thing.

Blake Scarbrough — 08:28 on 08.02.04#
 

I like their approach with the 'plog'. It is a friendlier way of pushing products towards you, instead of the old" recommended items" way. Plus it lets you know when items have been shipped and so it is more personalized towards you not everyone. That is why it they don't provide a way to link to it. It is a plog and not a blog.

The one suggestion I have is to provide a RSS feed for.

Beerzie Yoink — 09:35 on 08.02.04#
 

When the Hamburgler or that idiot in the Verizon ads gets a blog, that's it. I'm done.

Greg — 09:42 on 08.02.04#
 

Hello? Can you blog me now?

Brian — 10:59 on 08.04.04#
 

It seems as though the amazon plog is not Mozilla Firefox compatible. I get the regular old "we thought you'd like these" type page. In IE it works fine. I keep trying to escape Microsoft, but they keep pulling me back in!

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