Amazon Sponsored Content Local Seminars

Amazon has a new feature on the checkout page, local recommendations. In the example screenshot above, seminars.

Amazon has this to say under What’s This.

LEADERSHIP AND BUSINESS SEMINARS
These ads feature third-party offers that complement the products you’re shopping for on Amazon.com. They are shown on relevant product pages and are always clearly labeled. When you click on an ad, we get revenue. Generating additional revenue from advertising allows us to offer lower prices to you — something we are dedicated to doing in every way we can.

These advertisements are provided by Clickriver Ads. Clickriver is offered by A9.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com.

A9 is part of Amazon. The question is whether Clickserver retains any user information or if Amazon is just passing anonymous location information. Is it a privacy risk?

Admittedly, most Amazon users might be interested in targeted ads instead of random ones. Some users are very open about their address information. The flip side is likely true of most users, they don’t want anyone they don’t explicitly allow having access to their information.

This particular ad shows up on a page only visible to the customer and not visible on the users profile page.

What’s your take?

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Todd ‘tojosan’ Jordan

Amazon is my book store of choice. Heck, it’s my vendor of choice on more than books. Price and selection drive that choice. Think then I never visit the local book store. You’d be wrong.

Borders is a place I spend a fair amount of time. Sure, it doesn’t compete on price. The books on hand is of course less than Amazon warehouses. So why is it my favorite local store?

Borders provides a few things that Amazon still doesn’t have.

1) Context – yes, Amazon ‘recommends’ books I might like based on what other’s have purchased that purchased the books I’ve already bought. Of course, lots of those folks could have purchased purple dinosaur books this week. NOT a big interest of mine. Amazon doesn’t have a human placing books together in sets, by similar styles, topics, or authors. The Borders’ staff is always configuring displays where I can find five great superhero novels in one place, or five books on cyberculture. Books at book stores don’t exist in isolation.

2) Browsing – Amazon lets you look at pages in books. Sometimes you’ll get the table of contents. Nothing is as good though as putting your hands on a book and really browsing it. I love reading recommendations by other Amazon users, but checking out passages and chapters myself is best.

3) People – This is a big win some days. They can be somewhat useful for locating a book, they are even more valuable to figure out what book you want based on odds and ends. How often has someone recommended a book to you but you forgot the author, the title, and more. Those fine folks behind the counter are often up on the latest and greatest, and of course each seems to be a book geek as well. If they can’t figure it out, no one can.

4) People – Wait, this isn’t a mistake. Proximity to other book centered folks can be wonderful. The advent of the café in bookstores and extra seating has given them a real community feel. I’ve had some wonderful encounters my fellow searchers as conversations strike up over being in the same section, seeing them browsing a book you’ve just finished, or just running into someone that stands out.

Compelling reasons? They are for me. I neglected to mention one other huge reason I still visit book stores – I love the feel of books; the texture of the pages, the artwork, and even the smell. In my mind, those hold an almost mystical place. Amazon will never give me that feel.

Do you still visit real world book stores? Have you gone over to strictly online shopping? If you do visit a store or two, what’s your favorite brick and mortar book store?

Bonus: local to St. Louis? Want to visit a great local bookstore? Try Subterranean Books on Delmar.

It’s true, Amazon is giving away more free music.  Most important factor for me? It’s DRM free music.  Beyond being free, both cost and DRM wise, the music is at 256K recording quality.  That’s about  the best you’ll find for downloading.

If you love free, find Amazon Free Indie Music Samples.

Amazon has this running on the side of the main page. What exactly is the deal? Are they selling politics to get folks onto the site? Is it really relevant? How is this supposed to influence my shopping?

As the election draws closer, many blogs and other sites are taking advantage of it to draw traffic.  It seems Amazon is no less susceptible to the desire for hits.  The funny thing is that it’s actually a turn off for me.  I prefer to shop on Amazon, not get my news, politics, or even the weather.

Am I the only one this bothers?