Thousands of new bestseller lists for Amazon August 20, 1999 Just last week, Amazon resolved their dispute with the New York Times over their use of the paper's bestseller books lists. Well Amazon won't have to worry about that conflict with their new bestseller lists. By using the sales data they've collected on their customers Amazon has turned it around into another recommendation engine. The new service called Purchase Circles consists of a directory for thousands of bestseller lists organized by the domain names of their customers' e-mail addresses and the zip and postal codes items are being shipped to. So there's the Bank of American and Texaco Bestsellers List. Or you can find out what books or CDs people in Chicago are buying.

Outsource the work to affiliates and computers Amazon has built thousands of new views of their books, CDs and videos that just builds on their work with Book Matcher and Instant Recommendations. Like those two collaborative filters, Amazon doesn't have to dedicate editorial staff to manually create new pages with lists of books. Instead with a combination of affiliate programs, collaborative filtering and mining sales data in their database they can let other people and their servers create new shelves for their books and everything else they are selling. Jeff Bezos in a PC Week Q&A session in March outlined how affiliate programs are better than reality: "Take a company like Conde Nast. They have magazines that are the best in particular areas with the best editorial and merchandising staffs. Keep in mind that our strategy is to partner with others. We have over 200,000 associates. They put books into context. We have one [expert] who recommends books on Labrador Retrievers. We could never do that. [Our partners] give customers the best advice possible."

Privacy and Business Intelligence While Amazon won't have to fight the New York Times over these bestseller lists, there might be some problems with their customers inside corporations. How will companies feel about their competitors being able to look what's on their bookshelves? Some companies will have employees that have meaningless interactions with Amazon. Their circle will just mirror the New York Times bestsellers list. But what about companies that are more dependent on Amazon to supply books that effect future business plans? Customers have a tangible benefit with the current recommendation engines on Amazon suggesting similar books with minimal disclosure. But with Purchase Circles are some companies giving up too much privacy for little in return? Updated August 27, 1999 Amazon has modified their policy for the new Purchase Circles so individual customers can exclude their purchases from being excluded from the lists. Corporation will also be able to opt out and not be listed as a Purchase Circle.

Related links [1] Who owns the New York Times bestseller list?; Scott Roseneberg, Salon. [2] Amazon, New York Times resolve copyright suit; News.Com [3] Amazon.com founder spells out 'customer-centric' mission; PC Week [4] PlanetAll Keeps Online Masses Organized; Industry Standard [5] Big Brother, Big 'Fun' at Amazon; Wired News