Odd Amazon suggestions

Subject: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 09:41 AM

I spend a lot of time clearing my Amazon Recommendations of items suggested because they are similar to things I've bought for other people off their wishlists. However, there are also some strange linkings I can't see the logic of. For example becauase I ordered a Skiffle CD box set Amazon think I might like a case for a portable hard drive!!!
Any other 'Catters had amusing and weird suggestions offered to them by Amazon's "likes"??
RtS

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: artbrooks
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 10:08 AM

Well, most of the "recommendations" fall into general areas where Jenn or I spend money - like folk music (whatever that is), science fiction and knitting. Some of the connections are interesting, though. For instance, why did Amazon recommend the video of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" because we bought a copy of "Puck of Pooks Hill"?

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: MartinRyan
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 11:02 AM

Interesting. I had begun to think recently that there were some very odd suggestions scattered abmong my "reommendations". My own conclusion is that there is a (sponsored, I presume) random element thrown in now.

Regards

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 01:43 PM

I had the One Touch tin opener thingie after ordering Eric Bogel Singing the Spirit Home box set. Maybe they know something I don't.

I think it is just a random product generator.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Susan of DT
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 01:56 PM

Usually they are quite good, but they can get strange. Because I said I owned Shakespeare, which they apparently assume is a high school text, they started recommending other high school literature books, like Heart of Darkness. I sometimes have to tell them to ignore a book I book I have from recommendations because it spawns weird suggestions.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Noreen
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 02:01 PM

I think there will be some thesaurus-like connection between the names of the items, for example in Rog's first example, box(set)=case.

How about chip=puck (gambling chip, ice hockey puck) in art's case?

It's got to be done some way like that, unless, perhaps, Amazon employ a team of elves to look through your purchases and think friendly thoughts about what you would really, really like...

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 02:19 PM

'Heart of Darkness' is a high-school text?

No wonder we can't keep kids in school.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 03:59 PM

I read most of Conrad's books when I was in high-school or before. "Heart of Darkness" shound be an easy read for any high school student. Or nowadays do they all only piddle around with computer games?

Some of Amazon's suggestions seem far afield, but once in a while they suggest something from an unrelated field that I end up considering or buying. I don't object to their advertising; takes almost no time to look it over.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 09:28 AM

She who must be obeyed just capped mine: after putting the CD of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld on her wishlist Amazon suggested she might like the children's book Dinosaurs love Underpants. I can see their "logic": Underworld-Underpants...


RtS

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 10:04 AM

Talking about weird links;
I read the thread title & thought it would be about mastectomies!

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 10:33 AM

I just had one! Sorta'.........Same idea though a different place on Amazon. You know the buying preference thing they do?

"Of the people who viewed this item, 82% bought A, 13% bought B, 5 % bought C"...................or something like that. You know what I mean now?

Well.......

Yesterday I was researching a voice recognition software, Dragon Naturally Speaking, for sister Connie and today when I went to Amazon they had it this way:

77% bought Dragon version 10, 6% bought Monopoly World Edition, 3% bought Dragon version 9


Monopoly? What the hell? LMAO........Did they read about the software and just decide to say, "Screw it....Let's play Monopoly instead!" or what??? And since 3% bought Version 9 that means that MORE THAN ONE person bought Monopoly! I really don't get it......

Spaw

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 10:57 AM

There is a popular class of board and video games called Dragons and Dungeons, which is probably what got them off into Monopoly land. It started as a 1983 text-only adventure and grew to be a huge network of multi-user players.


A

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: gnomad
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 11:52 AM

My main gripe is their bland assumption that because you own book A by Joe Bloggs, you will not only want all JB's other works (fair enough idea) but you will also want every other edition of book A, the book you already own.

Because I once bought a memory card from them they offer as suggestions innumerable different cameras, and mp3 players. Understandable at one level I suppose, but I am sure most folks don't first buy memory cards then look for a way to use them.

I did enjoy the idea that having admitted to owning a blue netbook I would therefore want the same model in white as well.

Their latest oddity is "A Question of Upbringing" (volume 1 of 12 in Anthony Powell's opus "Dance to the Music of Time") as the obvious companion to a CD compilation "Never The Same - Leave-taking from the British Folk Revival".

They also think I will be interested in a tome called "Stop Thinking, Start Living: Discover Lifelong Happiness" because my wishlist includes Bob Copper's "A Song for Every Season: 100 Years in the Life of a Sussex Farming Family" just in case Amazon has any effect on whether it ever gets reprinted.

Some of these connections baffle me (particularly the last two) and I wonder whether they sometimes simply work from combinations of purchases made by other customers. To be fair they do come up with a good number of quite sound suggestions too, maybe they have rumbled me, and realize I will only go on browsing while they go on making daft suggestions.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 12:04 PM

Yeah Amos, I know about D&D and I could see how a computer might suggest a board game but that's not where it was located. This wasn't in the "YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE" column but in the info telling me what viewers of Dragon Naturally Speaking eventually purchased. I suppose I can see how the buyer relationship might have made it happen if they stumbled onto DNS while looking for D&D........yeah....... I got it..........sorta'.................................I'm still dense on these things...............yeah, dense...............thanks, I'd love to...............Fox Trot or Tango..............Who leads?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: gnomad
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 12:18 PM

They're getting desperate, latest crop includes:
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2007 because of Coope Boyes and Simpson's Passchendaele Suite. I loathe cricket.

101 French Idioms (101... Language Series) and Moliere [2007]
DVD because I own works by Erich Remarque.

And a case for a particular camera I have never owned, again because of the memory card.

More than odd, bizarre.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 07:37 PM

I don't know how universally Amazon makes available its MP3 downloads. For me, the free download of the day is a song called AM/FM by a group called (!!! Chk Chik Chick).
I don't know how you'd classify this type of music - techno-dance music, or something like that. Anyhow, my son is the lead singer and leader of the band. They used to be a punk band called Out Hud, and they had a fairly popular album titled Street Dad. The "single" on the album was a little ditty called "Dad, There's A Little Phrase Called Too Much Information."
Since the band had ten members, I asked my son which Dad was the subject of the CD and the single. His reply: "Dad, you don't need to ask."

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 08:17 PM

I don't allow the Amazon ads..... they take forever to load and bog down my effort to read a thread.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 08:46 PM

Since I've ordered from Amazon on-line (how else?), they have my e-mail address, so they send their recommendations to me that way. On occasion, they're actually worth considering.

But a little over a year ago, I ordered Paul O. Jenkins' biography, Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel, from Amazon. Lot of information, well-written, forward by Dyer-Bennet's daughter, Bonnie. Along with a list of his recorded songs and which records they're on, complete with Jenkin's comments on each one.

It was a rather staggering $50.00. But I've been following Dyer-Bennet's career ever since I got into playing the guitar and singing folk songs back in the early 1950s, and I've had a chance to meet him and talk with him on two occasions. So to me it was well worth it.

But ever since then, based on that purchase, I've received fairly regular recommendations from Amazon for books whose only common tie seems to be that they are based on some aspect of music, from the history and analysis of the Indian Raga to Great Yodelers of the World—and ALL expensive enough to require my mortgaging the ranch to buy.

Somebody at Amazon just doesn't quite get it!

Mildly amusing, though.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 03 Mar 11 - 01:21 AM

I was looking for content info of a book I own so I could show friends. I tried Amazon & found what I wanted.

I also found another book in the category that I will buy next week, and a few recommendations of what folks who bought both books also bought.

Most were in the category, but one was so far away from it I couldn't believe even one person buying the other 2 titles would ever need the 3rd book. And the thought that more than one buyer of those 2 books would want it ...

sandra (still shaking her head in amazement!)

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Tootler
Date: 03 Mar 11 - 09:50 AM

It's not just Amazon. In the related videos alongside my Video of the Tune "John Roy Lyall" are four videos about guns! Now figure that out.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: ClaireBear
Date: 03 Mar 11 - 01:06 PM

I think my weird Amazon suggestion has to be some kind of record setter. This was so unbelievable that I saved the email, just in case an opportunity ever came up to share it:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Bear in the Big Blue House - Party Time with Bear have also purchased Kafka's Metamorphosis on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that Kafka's Metamorphosis is now available. You can order yours for just $17.99 by following the link below.

Kafka's Metamorphosis
Anand Bhatt
Price:         $17.99

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Mar 11 - 02:01 PM

Now, that IS Kafka-esque!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 01:43 AM

yes!

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: IvanB
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 03:03 PM

I believe that one way Amazon works is by items purchased on the same order by its customers. Thus, if one customer ordered Bear in the Big Blue House - Party Time with Bear and Kafka's Metamorphosis on DVD in the same order, they immediately assume that any purchaser of either of these items must dearly want the other.

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 03:23 PM

OK, but you haven't answered my question. Was the free download from my son's band just for me, or was it available free to everyone in the U.S., or was it free to the entire world?

If I go to the MP3 page on Amazon today, the first two songs on the list are free recordings, a song called "Someone Like You" by Adele; and one called "Honest Face" by Liam Finn and Eliza Jane. And if I search for AM/FM a free MP3 download comes up for the song by my son's band (!!! Chk Chik Chick)

So, do the rest of you get my kid's song for free, or is it just me?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Odd Amazon suggestions
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 06:56 PM

Although the subject here is Amazon, the "guilt by association principle" has resulted in other "affiliations," most prominently and vividly illustrated by the year old complaint re Facebook:


Study: Facebook ads could out ...

By Helen A.S. Popkin
21 OCT 2010

Two hot topics collided on the Facebook recently when a new study revealed that site's ad-targeting program has the potential to out gay men to advertisers -- even users who have chosen to hide their sexual orientation (the "interested in" portion of the profile) from other users.
...
Researchers from Microsoft and Germany's Max Planck Institute monitored six fake profiles of varying orientation -- one gay man, one lesbian woman, two heterosexual women and two heterosexual men.

While the ads for the heterosexual and lesbian women weren't so different, those of the gay and heterosexual men were.

For example, the gay male profile received ads for gay bars. The straight male profiles didn't.

The gay male profile also received gender-neutral ads, such as those for nursing schools. The straight male profiles never received nursing school ads, or similar gender-neutral ads received by the gay male profile.

The issue here isn't stereotyping professions, but what the advertiser learns about a man clicking on an ad only targeted toward gay males. As the study points out, it's this:

"The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-preference and a unique identifier (cookie, IP address, or e-mail address if he signs up on the advertiser's site). Furthermore, such deceptive ads are not uncommon; indeed exactly half of the 66 ads shown exclusively to gay men (more than 50 times) during our experiment did not mention 'gay' anywhere in the ad text."

Last year, MIT students developed a software program able to detect with notable accuracy a Facebook user's sexuality via his or her friend's list. The term project for a class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier sparked discussion among privacy advocates about how much is inadvertently revealed about a social network user by both the user and the user's friends.

This new study on ad behavior tracking shows how much is revealed about a Facebook user even without that user's active participation.
...

[end quote]

Ignoring the gay/straight factore, it's obvious that the "associated ads" might be based on inferred (and believed) preferences that may not represent or may unfavorably represent you to others who assume that the "ASSumptions" made by the advertisers are accurate.

John