Comments on: Why doesn’t Amazon.com support embedding of their content? http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content designing user experiences Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:01:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Emmanuel Pappas http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/comment-page-1#comment-11641 Emmanuel Pappas Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:46:51 +0000 http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/#comment-11641 Andrew, well actually yes it would make a lot of sense for Amazon to enable embedding of images or even several pages from a book using ipaper. This would further expose their content encouraging discussion around this content which will in turn increase awareness of certain publications and finally translate into sales. How can you not see this??? You're not putting the embed code for the regular people! You are placing it there for bloggers and those people who want to be ambassadors for your product and get conversation happening around your content. Those widgets are lame! Andrew, well actually yes it would make a lot of sense for Amazon to enable embedding of images or even several pages from a book using ipaper. This would further expose their content encouraging discussion around this content which will in turn increase awareness of certain publications and finally translate into sales. How can you not see this??? You’re not putting the embed code for the regular people! You are placing it there for bloggers and those people who want to be ambassadors for your product and get conversation happening around your content. Those widgets are lame!

]]> By: Anders http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/comment-page-1#comment-3623 Anders Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:55:42 +0000 http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/#comment-3623 Ok, point taken, Amazon isn't the same as YouTube, and most people don't go to Amazon to embed content. Thanks for pointing me to the Amazon widgets site. That seems pretty close to what I was looking for. So, in line with that, to update my recommendation, it might make sense for Amazon to add a small 'share this' button to their pages, which would link to a contextual view of the widgets page. Ok, point taken, Amazon isn’t the same as YouTube, and most people don’t go to Amazon to embed content. Thanks for pointing me to the Amazon widgets site. That seems pretty close to what I was looking for. So, in line with that, to update my recommendation, it might make sense for Amazon to add a small ‘share this’ button to their pages, which would link to a contextual view of the widgets page.

]]> By: Andrew http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/comment-page-1#comment-3362 Andrew Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:54:52 +0000 http://www.andersramsay.com/2007/10/09/why-doesnt-amazoncom-support-embedding-of-their-content/#comment-3362 In principle, the idea of making it easier to use Amazon images off the Amazon site is good, but the YouTube way of putting the URL in a textfield is just gross. I mean, Amazon's detail pages aren't the most beautiful pages on the internet, but adding a "naked" URL in a box like that isn't even up to the current level of design quality. Plus, you've got to ask how many people really want to embed Amazon images in other places--it's not a site primarily about sharing digital content like YouTube is. We've got a lot of regular people shopping at Amazon who we can't ask to understand what "embed a URL" might mean. Check out <a href="http://widgets.amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">widgets.amazon.com</a>, which does a lot more than just let you grab an image for your website (although if you <i>just</i> want to grab an image, it's kind of a pain). In principle, the idea of making it easier to use Amazon images off the Amazon site is good, but the YouTube way of putting the URL in a textfield is just gross. I mean, Amazon’s detail pages aren’t the most beautiful pages on the internet, but adding a “naked” URL in a box like that isn’t even up to the current level of design quality. Plus, you’ve got to ask how many people really want to embed Amazon images in other places–it’s not a site primarily about sharing digital content like YouTube is. We’ve got a lot of regular people shopping at Amazon who we can’t ask to understand what “embed a URL” might mean.

Check out widgets.amazon.com, which does a lot more than just let you grab an image for your website (although if you just want to grab an image, it’s kind of a pain).

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