Amapedia – I am not sure I get it

Amazon launched their Amapedia – a wiki of everything they and all their affiliates sell. I am not sure I get it, though. Just because something is wiki, it doesn’t mean I will get all fired up to go scribbling across their empty articles. Why should I fill in their content for them? Why should I help Amazon sell a bunch of books about fruit?

We all contribute to the wikipedia because we feel like we’re contributing to the Greater Good, The Source, The Permanence of Man. Make it in the wikipedia, and you’ve achieved immortality, in a way. My Grandmother made it– good for her. But where’s the feel-good for writing some ad-copy about a watch? Sure enough– the articles in the Amapedia with the strongest (only?) content are the ones about strategy games, computer games, and pop music. In otherwords, products gravitating towards subjective pop-fluff that the kids like to shout about. We have reached the corporate-sanctioned version of “Clapton is God”, where we delude ourselves to think that subjective opinion will battle it out toward some greater truth.

eCommerce _must_ embrace the community. Content must rely on the mass contributions of the customers. The problem is– how to involve the customers to the point where they feel like writing your ad copy for you?