Amazon’s New Wikipedia Copy: Amapedia

Amapedia or really just [Ama(zon)-(Wiki)pedia] is Amazon’s answer to the web’s continuing turn to user content. Any web user can tell that ordinary website reviews are boring and for the most part go unread by the intended users. But with an ambitious service like Amapedia it should serve to gain as much popularity as Wikipedia itself.

Like Google Amazon is learning to use trends to it’s own advantage. From it’s new answers service and it’s mobile phone version called NowNow Amazon is moving in as another web giant.

This beta has few new things mostly the ability of anyone with an Amazon user account to edit it. Other features include the tagging of said products and facts about them. As well as marking your favorite items. They didn’t waste anytime of course coming up with rules from the Amapedia about page:

Do:

1. write about your favorite products
2. find out what others’ favorite products are
3. quantify why you like or dislike a product as much as possible (”oh, I didn’t like it” without any context is not very helpful to others)
4. cite your sources
5. disclose if you are affiliated with the product, such as being the author of a book (or the spouse or close friend of the author)

Do Not:

1. self-promote by referring to yourself, your work, or your Web sites in an article that is unrelated to your self-promotion
2. store personal photos
3. create a personal home page (we may support that in the future)
4. talk in the first person in the main body of product articles (that’s what the “Anecdotes, Experiences, Opinions, Comments” section is for)
5. express personal opinions about things that are not products (i.e., while we are very interested in your opinion about a book about the Iraq war – particularly so if you can calmly document specific good and bad points about it – we are not at all interested in your personal opinions about the Iraq war itself on this site)
6. accept payments or gifts from anyone to edit material on amapedia

So far it seems to be progressing slowly but on a good scale.