

Amazon offers way to keep track of things you want to buy at other stores - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/technology/personaltech/22askk-003.html?_r=1&8cir&emc=cirb1

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mikeyur
Awesome move by Amazon.

Make themselves look better in the consumer's eyes, but us business-savvy folk
know just how smart this is.

Finding out what people really want - that they don't sell, or how much they
should be charging for items compared to other retailers.

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josefresco
This is a pretty killer feature. I utilize an Amazon wish list for my family
but sometimes what I want simply isn't sold there. Instead of making my own
custom list I'd love to use Amazon for it all.

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bl00m
Very clever! I wouldn't be surprised if you find a "Buy that on Amazon" link.

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jupiter
Actually this would be a reminder for me to check if an item is also available
on Amazon.

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walterk
Which, of course, helps Amazon figure out what it doesn't sell, but should.
I'd say it's a brilliant idea, but I can't help thinking, what took them so
long?

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vlad
Have you never created something before and then later thought of something to
add?

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walterk
Have you never seen a feature implemented that was (a) kind of obvious, and
(b) a long time coming?

I can appreciate that not everyone thinks this was an obvious idea. I'd
appreciate it even more if you can respect that I think it was fairly obvious.
Thanks.

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vlad
Thanks for your reply.

My tool for eBay had an E-mail to a Friend feature before eBay did. eBay later
added that feature, and these days it's prominent on top of every auction.

My tool also had tabbed web browsing before Internet Explorer did, a Microsoft
product.

My tool also had a popup-menu where a user could scroll up and down via a
mouse (to enter bids from a menu rather than having to type them in) before
the iPhone even existed (with their calendar date picker), an Apple product.

It itself was a desktop app before eBay every announced theirs.

It's really not whether a feature is obvious in hindsight. I've done stuff
that seems "obvious" right now (never mind just "thought it was obvious in
hindsight without implementing anything"), and it was new. You can't think of
it that way. Amazon's new feature is quite new and groundbreaking.

But I can see your point. It's because it's a big company, that when it
finally got around to implementing something like that, that it's a miracle.
In fact, it wasn't until very recently that users have been allowed to select
quantities when adding an item, versus in the shopping cart.

And of course, they are a big company, and so part of the news is that they
had the panache to allow tracking of other companies products.

Funnily enough, my tool did that exact same thing, earlier--the entire point
was to track items a user was planning on buying from eBay, Yahoo!, and
Overstock auctions; Amazon was the fourth but I never got around to
implementing screen scraping for their auctions, for various reasons, though
it had it's own ID reserved in my code/database, as it was originally a
planned feature. I think my YC application mentioned creating something
similar, but a web app.

Note that when these four or so companies added the features I mentioned to
their own products, boy did they get tons of press and praise! :)

And regarding features that are "obvious" that I haven't created, it's not a
useful metric. There have been many YC companies that have done something I've
thought of, but didn't: an eBay seller tool, a program that runs on your
computer and tracks your time and the apps you are using in a web app
interface, a tool that backs up your files on your computer via a local
network to other computers whenever two or more are running, encrypted and
seamlessly, a hands-on survey app for the iPhone, an expense tracker, a work
log, all before those companies started YCombinator or switched their idea to
their current one. It's all obvious. It's all execution.

Off topic, but interestingly enough, some of the earliest users of my bidding
tool for eBay were from San Jose, CA.

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walterk
Nod. If I had a nickel for every web app I've thought of and could have
executed on but didn't, only to see others take the same idea and launch...I
might have a buck fifty.

I should qualify that when I say the Amazon feature is "obvious", it's only
from my perspective as a user. I would want a site-independent wishlist for
the simple reason that I wouldn't want to manage wishlists on multiple sites.
Only now, however, is it clear to me what the business incentive is for that.

