Power of social media

In any case Amazon failed

Actually, we can extract three main versions describing the reasons of mass lost of sales ratings on Amazon.com site.

First, Amazon deliberately targeted gay and lesbian-themed books. Those who took part in anti-Amazon social media rebellion were sure it was true. They were sure that corporate giant wanted to change ratings quietly.

Second, it was a technical glitch that caused problems in tens of thousands of different sites. In more detailed way, it was a catalogue error and 57,310 books belonging to different categories had been affected. This is slightly modernized version of events from Amazon side.

Third version is connected with hacking. Anonymous hacker declared in Livejournal discussion group that he injected harmful code and provoked the lost of ranks for hundreds of gay and lesbian-themed books. Though hacker “Weev” has taken responsibility for “Amazon glitch” and even partly explained the technology he used, the officials from the site rejected this version.

It was impossible to stop social media riot. Twitter, Facebook, numerous blog posts, Googlebombing, online petitions, hacking tools – all these tools were used against Amazon just in few hours. This story supports Manual Castells idea that we already have mass self-communication system. The system is multi-directed and cannot be managed from one centre. It demands completely different approaches from big business.

Nowadays it doesn’t matter, whether Amazon is responsible for changing ratings or the company just is just a sacrifice of other attempts. The reputation of Amazon suffered severely and it will demand a lot of money and efforts to restore it. It is wondering that the company which was one of the first pioneers of Web 2.0 technologies suffered from their power.