i had thought that i was just not part of the beta.
i had thought that Amazon was doing something really clever with regard to the "Plogs" that they are running. (No, sorry, no link since.. well…)
Amazon has always been ahead of the curve when it came to adopting new technologies. They adopted affiliate programs way the heck before anyone else (allowing folks to put Amazon ads on their personal pages). They were ahead of SEO by doing pretty much the same thing. They were ahead of the pack by adopting RSS so that folks could get lists of new products or display those on their web pages. In most respects, Amazon has been about as blog friendly as you can get, so the idea of a "Plog" was pretty interesting to me.
i had wondered if Amazon had decided to do something really interesting and allow folks to create mini-blogs around their various purchases. i mean they've got Wishlists, which allow folks to publically list and comment on items they want (or want someone else) to buy, they've got all that spiffy RSS content, surely adding something like comments and a few other blog like functions would be a no-brainer.
But no, instead we get something that proves that Amazon pretty much still doesn't get blogs. What the Plog apparently is (thanks to Defective Yeti for confirming this) is a non-customizeable page, visible only to you, where the same suggest-o-bots list out suggested items and clean underware for you to buy. Without further comment.
Excuse me, but how in blue hell is that different than what they've been offering for years? Oh, wait, now it's called a "Plog" which is cool because it reminds folks my age of that weird milk cap collection fad. Ooh, and as a bonus, they even have a bunch of links to real-honest to God blogs so folks can be even more confused, (or so that those big blogs can point back at that page and increase it's GoogleRank, or something.)
i'm sorry, but i'm very disappointed in that. i mean i'd expect that kind of crap from Macy's or Gap or someother site that just read about blogs from a three year old USA Today article.
Granted, there's another option as well.
It could be that this is actually a very clever ploy on their part. They announce "Plogs", wait a few weeks, then collect up all the infuriated "They should have done X" comments from cheesed off people like me.
Hey, it's better than Google running a contest because this way they don't have to even short pay them.
