Comments on: Amazon Fail : Motrin moms Redux?

By: Josh Lavoie

Josh Lavoie — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:43:38 +0000

I must say I’m very impressed at your ability to remain open to the possibility that the ratings scandal was caused by a “glitch”. Although you’re quite right in the fact that we do not have the empirical evidence to prove this one way or another it seems unlikely that a glitch could cause such an acutely targeted loss in ranking data. An organization like Amazon would have extensive backup and restore capabilities that could, and should have been used to restore any lost ranking data. Additionally, if the rankings downgrade was the result of a new search algorithm it seems that it would be virtually impossible to accidentally, disproportionately affect LGBT content. If they did something along the lines of a keyword search how could they miss all of the heterosexual romance novels with “raunchy, raunchy, raunchy” in the comments?

I have great respect for your ability to keep an open mind on this matter, it’s certainly something that I haven’t been able to manage!

By: Omega Point » Blog Archive » #Amazonfail

Omega Point » Blog Archive » #Amazonfail — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:39:45 +0000

[...] In his blog post on the subject, Raul (Hummingbird604) compares the move by Amazon to last year’s “Motrin Moms” debacle. He also raises the question, is Easter Sunday a good time to be organizing a protest? Absolutely. Is Easter Sunday an okay time for Amazon PR to take the day off? Obviously not. [...]

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:03:19 +0000

The debunking of the hacker claim is BS... im not saying the person claiming responsibility is telling the truth of course... but so what if the code posted is buggy? He was writing an account of the incident not a howto. Each step/gotcha he seemed to address... everything seems viable. Jeremy’s last blog post..Hacking Internal Networks using IE7 & IE8

By: david

david — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:55:24 +0000

This is my view on their public burning….

http://thelostagency.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/amazon-burned-at-the-stake/

By: Cathy Browne

Cathy Browne — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:11:05 +0000

First, as an individual, I am appalled at Amazon for introducing this practice.

As a PR professional for more than 20 years, what concerns me isn’t the lack of crisis management now – it’s the apparent lack of forethought before this was even put into motion. One of the most important fundamentals of PR is anticipating all of the consequences of any action – and ensuring that management understands and accepts that they will need to be ready to respond swiftly and intelligently.

Given the various reactions of Amazon spokespersons (including blaming the removal of the rankings as a ‘glitch’), that very critical PR activity either did not happen, or was ignored. Unfortunate – and thoughtless, in either case.

By: Raul

Raul — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:48:11 +0000

The biggest beef I have is with what I mentioned above – why roll out a new algorithm that can possibly have sensitive consequences?

By: Emme

Emme — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:39:58 +0000

This is going to make a fascinating case study in business practice and ethics. Can’t wait to see what Amazon has to say tomorrow.

By: John Pettitt

John Pettitt — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:36:23 +0000

The response we got from Amazon was that it was a ‘glitch’

http://carnalnation.com/content/4937/3/breaking-amazon-calls-glbt-issues-glitch-promises-fix

They get points for answering press email at 10PM on a Sunday – not enough points to wipe out the deficit for doing it in the first place.

John Pettitt’s last blog post..Breaking: Amazon calls GLBT issues a ‘glitch’ – promises fix.

By: tara

tara — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:19:11 +0000

As an online business Amazon is making money on a holiday, so they need to be responsive to their customers on a holiday. Good point about not rolling out changes over a holiday weekend when there's no one around to fix stuff, or address the PR disaster, if things go sideways. tara’s last blog post..Amazon fail

By: Fiona Pitt-Kethley

Fiona Pitt-Kethley — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:52:55 +0000

Abebooks was bought by Amazon – alas, there is no good alternative

By: Raul

Raul — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:49:27 +0000

Thanks all for your comments. Also, I’ve amended the post to reflect my questions and perhaps some early lessons for PR crisis management and web-based business management

By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:36:38 +0000

Why in god's name would they not have an option to see the list including or excluding mature content? Erotica sells quite a LOT; are they trying to put themselves out of the business? Abebooks FTW! raincoaster’s last blog post..Happy Easter!

By: Fiona pitt-Kethley

Fiona pitt-Kethley — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:16:11 +0000

My anthology The Literary Companion to Sex seems to have been taken off ranking. I think the word sex in the title was enough. while there is a small amount of gay sex in it there is a great deal more heterosexual.

By: Bree

Bree — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:10:35 +0000

Found this post from #amazonfail on twitter. And actually, what they’re doing is a bit worse than that. Amazon is removing the rankings from all books they classify as “adult” (so far that seems to include erotic romance, books with GLBT themes and some non-fiction sex titles including books about feminism and having sex with disabilities) so that they no longer show up in bestseller lists at all. The purported reason for doing so is so they will not show up in “general” searches of the website.

So now an author who writes exclusively GLBT or erotic romance titles may appear not to exist during a search of All Departments (the search that you perform if you type a word/title/author into the search box on the front page.) If you simply pull up amazon and search for one of the books whose rankings have been removed, amazon will act as if this book does not exist, and suggest similar titles. The only way to find it is to get into the right category first and then search, or be linked directly.