
Why We Love Email from Amazon and Hate Email from Barnes & Noble - wumi
http://www.jondale.com/blog/2008/05/why-we-love-ema.html
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tom
This guy's reading choices aside, this is further proof that Amazon takes
their recommendations very, very seriously and understands that good recs =
revenue. B&N - I'm not sure what they understand. B&N just doesn't seem to get
it. Their Book Clubs could be great communities - if they were about
community, not selling books (the sales will come folks!). And frankly, think
outside the box folks. A recycled forum is just so lacking. The good thing
about B&N is that they can often get the book there faster than (non-prime)
Amazon. But when it comes down to it, I still do most of my nerd purchasing at
bookpool. They don't try to recommend or sell me anything, but what I buy from
them, they get right, and get it to me fast.

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thaiyoshi
I remember really wanting to like B&N e-mails. The thing that annoyed me was
that they would always pretend to have great deals just for me. Then I
realized that all of their 20% off deals would still cost me more than buying
the book from Amazon at their normal price. Plus as alluded to in the article,
I never saw any books/movies/CDs that jumped at me. I finally gave up and
unsubscribed.

I love Border's e-mails on the other hand. They send me coupons varying from
10%-40%. I think that they do data mining to figure out which e-mails I
respond to. I'm trying to teach their learning algorithm that I only use 40%
off coupons;-)

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notauser
I don't want to get junk e-mail from _anyone_. I always uncheck any preference
boxes and it drives me wild when companies ignore that. Amazon seems to be a
good citizen, but Expansys, AoC, Waitrose and a few others are persistant
offenders.

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tx
Agreed. Amazon rocks. But I'd recommend that guy to change his habits though:
classical music is better for you than junk common sense literature. I haven't
read all of those books, but some. Maybe others are better, but I doubt it.
When Peter Norvig joked at startup school about lack of substance in these
"economics for masses" books, the audience audibly agreed.

~~~
redorb
I don't know if you should judge another's reading selection.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
sure you should, watch this.

Adults who list "Harry Potter" among their top books are morons.

~~~
mleonhard
What if they list Tolkien books or have a forum nick from Lord of the Rings?
By the way, 'Nazgul' and 'Narsil' aren't two words that would normally go
together.

~~~
jraines
(LoTR > Harry Potter) x infinity

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aneesh
Yeah, this is surprising from B&N. If Qdoba can track all the burrito
purchases I make, B&N can surely keep track of what books I have. Once you
have the data, making recommendations isn't rocket science.

