Google Bomb Time!
The call has been made through the netsphere, Amazon has been deigned to be googlebombed. Smart Bitches Trashy Books has a new definition for Amazon Rank on urbandictionary. Dear Author is calling for a full boycott. I'm not sure how I feel about this...I use it so often and it's so cheap to get the books I need that are hard to find...
Btw, the Amazon Fail has reached across the pond. I wonder if the New York Times will have a feature on it? The Guardian sure did. It also made the LA Times and wired. Damn, even the Christian Science Monitor got involved.
Oh, so true.
FYI, the petition is up to nearly 30,000 signatures.
Update: There is now a facebook group, Amazon Fail. So far 3,000+ people have joined. Ah, Cyberactivism is a marvelous thing.
I think Amazon is really going to regret this and like how Evgeny Morozov, spoke of the Streisand-Amazon effect, I think is going to cause a massive surge in those books sales (I was looking at a few titles myself) and massive profits for their competitors. Powell Books is contemplating a GBLT sale.
I like this logo, I wonder if anyone has made fail boat icons yet?
Update: The List of the books affected by the failboat.
Update: Thestranger's slog offers an interesting insight to the twitter riot. Is this our new forum to protest and riot against big money?
Amazon Rank
amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked
1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies).
2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.
Etymology: from 12 April 2009 removal of sales rank figures from books on Amazon.com containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com's website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include "Bastard Out of Carolina," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," prominent romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people.
Example of usage: "I tried to do a report on Lady Chatterley's Lover for English Lit, but my teacher amazon ranked me and I got an F on grounds that it was obscene."
Alternate usage: "My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay."
Btw, the Amazon Fail has reached across the pond. I wonder if the New York Times will have a feature on it? The Guardian sure did. It also made the LA Times and wired. Damn, even the Christian Science Monitor got involved.
Was it a big blunder on Amazon’s part? Foreign Policy blogger Evegny Morozov posted under the heading of “#amazonfail and the politics of anticorporate cyberactivism” and even linked the debacle to the Twitter revolution in Moldova.
According to Morozov, Amazon goofed big time. When a company underestimates the power of Internet activism, he wrote, it “usually ends up paying much higher fees in publicity services to deal with a swell of the negative publicity – all embedded in the precious Google juice – than the losses it would incur from dealing with complaints from their conservative customers, who may want to restrict the publication of certain materials.”
Oh, so true.
FYI, the petition is up to nearly 30,000 signatures.
Update: There is now a facebook group, Amazon Fail. So far 3,000+ people have joined. Ah, Cyberactivism is a marvelous thing.
I think Amazon is really going to regret this and like how Evgeny Morozov, spoke of the Streisand-Amazon effect, I think is going to cause a massive surge in those books sales (I was looking at a few titles myself) and massive profits for their competitors. Powell Books is contemplating a GBLT sale.
I like this logo, I wonder if anyone has made fail boat icons yet?
Update: The List of the books affected by the failboat.
Update: Thestranger's slog offers an interesting insight to the twitter riot. Is this our new forum to protest and riot against big money?