Amazon Profiles Could Dominate The Internet And Dethrone Facebook
Amazon is quickly becoming the try- and do-everything company.
When was the last time you checked your Amazon profile?
Who do you follow there?
Have you started any “Idea Lists?”
Updated your header image?
Changed your profile pic?
Did you even know they existed? Check to see if you have one here.
Your Amazon profile allows you to add a bio, link to your website and social media, fill in your occupation, and allow customers to follow you while you can follow authors, brands, other customers, and interests. There’s a “Community activity” feed where you can see your “Idea Lists,” the reviews you’ve left, and posts from Amazon stores and brands.
Amazon has a history of gobbling up disparate corporations and startups as if it’s a blind mouse rummaging through a flash-sale of American small businesses or starting its own competing companies to those it wants to dominate, and it’s massive today.
The company dabbles in book publishing, TV and movie production, video streaming, prepackaged pharmaceuticals, home security, grocery stores, web hosting, software, hardware (Alexa, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV), e-commerce, government and police contracts, IMDb and Box Office Mojo, music streaming, cloud photo storage, education, renewable energy, home delivery, drones, video game development, healthcare, and so much more.
Even this eclectic list feels inadequate in capturing the breadth and depth of Amazon’s reach and interests.
So it should be no surprise that Amazon profiles feel just as chaotic. There’s a touch of Facebook (the feed), a pinch of Pinterest (Idea Lists), and a dash of Instagram (social shopping) all rolled into a familiar yet odd package, and the company could easily consolidate control over that consumer buying power with a new social media offering.
But Why?
Posts is still in beta, and I couldn’t figure out how to follow a brand or store to see what would show up in my feed, so the entire thing feels early-stage. But it’s not impossible to spot the potential as Facebook’s domination gets called further into question as more look for communities outside of the toxic platform’s reach.
But massive multi-billion-dollar monopolies rarely welcome online dissidents without their own intent.
Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce continues to grow during the coronavirus pandemic, and the company has clear sights on controlling every aspect of both the online and brick-and-mortar shopping experience – from ordering socks via an Alexa smart speaker through to their one-day drone delivery service.
It also sells its own Amazon-branded products, its own Amazon-published books, and its own Amazon-produced TV shows and movies alongside established brands and small mom-and-pop shops forced online to compete against Amazon in Amazon’s house by Amazon’s rules.
Amazon is a storefront for millions of small businesses that sell rare, used, or other unique items, and Amazon playing the unnecessary middle man is ripe for abuse. This control gives Amazon the ability to decide which stores and sellers survive and which die as millions continue to flock to the service to shop out of convenience. Even creators are at Amazon’s whims, with the company offering gracious refund periods for products bought through Kindle and Audible.
The company has grown far beyond its e-commerce label into a societal juggernaut with power that we should not trust it will wield responsibly, not when the goal is to make a buck.
Status Update
There’s a high likelihood this is all for naught, and Amazon profiles will whither in obscurity like countless other Amazon products (who remembers that the company offers smart glasses?), or it will suffer from lackluster quality. Amazon’s website feels intentionally clunky, and it wasn’t intuitive navigating profiles, Idea Lists, or followers.
But it’s easy to imagine how the company could allow you to add friends, display what TV shows and movies you enjoy and own, share your birthday wish list, discuss the latest Taylor Swift album, show off your vacation photos, publish and promote your new sci-fi novel, livestream video games, sell your textbooks, and more, all while making Amazon a cash-demanding middle man.
Think about what could be:
You buy an Amazon product, and Amazon makes money. You buy a non-Amazon product, and Amazon still makes money. You buy from a third-party seller, and Amazon still makes some money.
You create an Idea List, and Amazon collects your data. You start a movie but don’t finish it, and Amazon collects that data, too.
Amazon then uses that information to sell its products to you, and then charges others to access that data to also advertise to you. Amazon also uses that data to create movies, shows, and books better geared toward a general audience.
All while Amazon controls what you see on its site.
Stir all those ingredients into a warm pot of unrestrained capitalism and you have a new delicious form of sanitized social media ready for a rabid consumer base looking for something new. The only thing Amazon is missing is the conversation, and adding it could make it vastly more central to our lives than Facebook could ever hope to be.
It also makes Amazon as dangerous as Facebook, if not more so, to online digital decentralization, democratization, and diversity. Zukerburg’s social media giant has enormous sway over content producers around the world, charging access to its 2.7-billion users. Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce could result in the same gatekeeping, though on a grander scale, pushing out controversial and competitive publishers, stores, products, and streamers.
Amazon is a content producer, retailer, product manufacturer, and software developer, and Amazon profiles could help tie all those services and products into an inescapable online behemoth. Increased calls from both sides of the political spectrum to reform how the internet works—Section 230 in particular—could give Amazon and other tech giants further control over an internet they need to survive as they declare that only they are the arbiters of a safe and secure internet.
Amazon’s social media ambitions could be far below those of what I could imagine them be, though it’d seem like a missed opportunity if Amazon doesn’t try to dethrone Facebook, and take over the world.
P.S. Amazon should change “Idea Lists” to “IdeaLists.” That one’s free.
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Next newsletter publishes on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.