Amazon.com joins blog and RSS ranks
Fellow Seattle company Amazon.com has joined the ranks of businesses using blog and RSS technology to stay in touch with customers and enhance their buying experience. Law firms should take notice of the growing use of blogs and RSS, especially by leading e-commerce sites like Amazon. It only took a year or two from the time consumers starting buying on line in masse until most lawyers starting using Web sites to market legal services. Expect the same with blogs and RSS.
Internetnews.com reports Amazon, “looking to take advantage of the blogging craze, …has launched a beta of Plogs, or personalized blogs, to shuttle links of recommended products and relevant shopping information to users.” In March Amazon began using RSS to deliver customized RSS feeds to customers.
Internetnews.com provided the following details:
According to Amazon.com director of platform and technology communications Craig Berman, the goal of the Plog service is to “provide users with an easy way to keep current on events that are relevant to them.”
“The service is designed to further enhance the customer experience by providing personalized information, including product recommendations, order updates and other Amazon.com content in one convenient location,” Berman said in an e-mail exchange.
According to a note on Amazon.com, the Plog is a diary-type feature of the users’ shopping experience. “]It will help] 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.”
As to RSS, Internetnews.com reports:
“Amazon.com’s RSS feeds have been programmed to deliver content by categories, subcategories and search results from its Web site. The company said the feeds would deliver a headline-view of the top 10 bestsellers in specific categories or set of search results. Categories include books, music, DVDs/videos, electronics, toys and magazines.”
Plogs were only presented to some Amazon customers so I am not sure how they are going to work. But we now have Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates here in Seattle using and talking about blogs and RSS for their companies. What these guys do is big when it comes to Internet – just further evidence that RSS and blogs are going to be a big deal.