Yesterday blogger Paul Bausch noticed that Amazon has added comments to reviews, meaning one Amazon customer can now leave a comment on a review that another customer wrote. This isn't especially interesting, except that it's almost a complete about-face from the policy Amazon has maintained as long as it's had reviews. Amazon has always actively discouraged reviewers from "replying" to other reviews or making reference to them in their own reviews. As Bausch astutely points out, "If people know that their reviews are "thread starters" rather than isolated posts, you could get more chatty reviews with open-ended questions designed to provoke discussion. You should also get more flame wars, more trolling, all of the standard online discussion problems." It's hard to tell how Amazon is going to deal with the imminent influx of comments, but if they can keep things relatively civil, I think it adds a lot of value for shoppers.[Via Waxy.org]
