urn:lj:insanejournal.com:atom1:msilverstar *clings to friends* msilverstar@insanejournal.com msilverstar 2009-04-14T05:51:31Z urn:lj:insanejournal.com:atom1:msilverstar:80448 2009-04-14T05:31:38Z 2009-04-14T05:51:31Z

Monday night: columnist has an <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp">Inside look at amazon during the fail</a><br /><br /><b>(<a href="http://msilverstar.insanejournal.com/80448.html">Read more ...</a>)</b>

urn:lj:insanejournal.com:atom1:msilverstar:80076 2009-04-13T04:24:36Z 2009-04-13T06:03:01Z

<ol><li><a name="cutid1"></a>Please don't call Amazon customer support, today, at least. It's Easter Sunday, (as the BBC puts it, "the most important festival of the Christian religion). The poor schmucks stuck on the phones KNOW about amazonfail and they can't do a damn thing about it. </li><br /><li><a name="cutid2"></a>Googlebombing is fun: enough bloggers and such link to a certain page with the same text, and it shows up in the Google (Yahoo/Live/whatever) search for that term. Link to the <a href="http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/amazon-rank">smartbitches</a> redefinition of <a href="http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/">Amazon Rank</a>, and it <s>will be</s> <strong>is</strong> first in the search results. <strong> We've done it as of 3 AM GMT April 12th</strong>:-) </li><br /><li><a name="cutid3"></a>Glitches do happen, and this may well be one. I don't think that Amazon did this on purpose, exactly. I am sure that their sales ranking <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=525376&amp;tag=organifortran-20">rules</a> are <a href="http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2009/01/understanding-your-amazon-sales-rank/">convoluted</a>, and change hourly, because people try to <a href="http://www.johntreed.com/Whitneybestseller.html">game the system</a> and get their books higher in the lists. So. <strong>Someone somewhere equated "gay and lesbian" with "adult"</strong>, it could have been an exec, it could have been an overworked coder -- we'll probably never know. What a mess. Intent may not matter, they've ended up disrespecting a whole raft of people and not acknowledging and fixing it fast enough.</li></ol><br />Alternatives to Amazon: <a href="http://www.indiebound.org">Local Indie Bookstores</a>, <a href="http://www.powells.com">Powell's Books</a>, <a href="http://www.borders.com/">Borders</a>, <a href="http://www.bn.com">Barnes & Noble</a>. Always good to have business diversity, choices, and good old free-market competition.

urn:lj:insanejournal.com:atom1:msilverstar:79659 2009-04-12T21:36:52Z 2009-04-12T21:41:19Z

Amazon has just re-defined pretty much every book in their Gay and Lesbian section as "adult" and removed their "sales rank" and listings in the bestseller lists. As though their <em>existence</em> is too scary for children. I'm a mom, gay is just a word for some of our relatives: how <em>dare</em> Amazon try to make them disappear? <br /><br /><b>(<a href="http://msilverstar.insanejournal.com/79659.html">Read more ...</a>)</b>

urn:lj:insanejournal.com:atom1:msilverstar:75304 2009-03-04T22:55:32Z 2009-03-04T23:00:22Z

Sometimes what people do just boggles me.<br /><br /><b>(<a href="http://msilverstar.insanejournal.com/75304.html">Read more ...</a>)</b>