Amazon is creating summaries of the reviews on its site. Good summaries surface juicy details, they don’t just generate a homogeneous slurry — which is why Amazon’s summaries suck. (Thanks to Phil Simon for bringing these to my attention.) How to summarize The problem with most people writing summaries is that they summarize. Averaging everything…
Last week I posted about the Amazon Token crypto scam advertised on Facebook. That post received 4,000 views in six days, which is about eight times my usual traffic for a new post, and shows no sign of stopping. Here’s what made it take off. A deliberate move to capture traffic through SEO As soon…
This ad for “Amazon Token” on Facebook intrigued me. Is that Jeff Bezos pitching me a cryptocurrency? So I clicked through. What I found is a slick, well produced, seductive website . . . that I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with Amazon. They’ll be happy to take your crypto money — in the…
John Logan, the scriptwriter behind two of the latest James Bond movies, is worried that when Amazon buys MGM, it will ruin 007. But data and corporate control doesn’t necessarily ruin creativity. It all depends on who’s making the creative decisions. John Logan’s lament for 007 Here’s some of what John Logan, co-writer of “Skyfall”…
Amazon is an indispensable partner for any author. It’s also a problematic company whose dominance of the publishing business threatens everyone from independent bookstores to self-published authors. What’s an author to do? You could boycott Amazon completely. I have a friend who’s doing that. But if you’re an author, completely avoiding Amazon is going to…
It’s a truism in social media circles: brands should be more human. Of course, humans have a full range of emotions — they can be angry, not just nice or funny. Do we really want angry brands? Brands like Amazon that attack people on social media are going to find out they’re making a mistake….
Amazon recently posted a job description for an “Intelligence Analyst.” It came under fire because the description explicitly calls for tracking “threats” of labor organizing, which is generally illegal. But it’s also a fascinating snapshot into how leaders at Amazon talk (or doubletalk). The listing, which was visible yesterday, is no longer live at Amazon,…
Zoom is great. Meeting on Zoom for 5 hours a day, not so much. Writing can help — especially if your company adopts a writing-centric “memo culture.” The value of a memo culture Consider two companies that have a memo culture, Amazon and Netflix. At Amazon, if you’re having a meeting, you have to write…
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, received emails threatening blackmail from the parent company of the National Enquirer. Rather than knuckle under, he defiantly published the blackmail emails in his own post. If you want to write with conviction while under pressure, there’s a lot to learn here. Bezos’s post…