Amazon launches the “Plog”

Earlier today, Amazon launched their new author blog tool. Plog, as it is named by Amazon offers authors a way to communicate with customers. An excerpt from their release:

Your Amazon.com Plog is a personalized web log that appears on your customer home page. Every person's Plog is different (hence the name) and just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. Each post also gives you the opportunity to provide feedback to the sender as to whether you liked the post or not. This feedback loop means your Plog becomes even more relevant and interesting over time.

Posts in Your Plog come from many sources, including authors of books you have purchased on Amazon.

The basic idea is that its a customized blog in which Amazon decides what to send to me based on past purchases and click behaviour. I think it is an interesting concept and appears to be working based on the number of comments posted.

For me, when I come to Amazon it is either to read reviews of a product or order an item. Not sure I will spend the time to read a product blog when there are so many other great blogs already online. If I could select my Plog categories then I could see this becoming a much more beneficial tool. On my second view it offered me video game content, I have no time for games these days (except Ms. PacMan) so maybe another category would work better for me.

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