What can A’zone new shops teach us?

I don’t often quote Jason Kottke. I do admire his way of postings things I like, but I more often point to those things rather than to JK’s views. But I do agree with him on Amazon’s data-driven bookstores:

Other bookstores have books arranged according to best-seller lists, store-specific best-sellers, and staff recommendations, but I’ve never seen any store layout so extensively informed by data and where they tell you so much about why you’re seeing each item. Grocery store item placement is very data driven, but they don’t tell you why you’re seeing a display of Coke at the end of the aisle or why the produce is typically right at the entrance. It’ll be interesting to see if Amazon’s approach works or if people will be turned off by shopping inside a product database, a dehumanizing feeling Frommer hints at with “a collection of books that feels blandly standard” when compared to human curated selections at smaller bookstores.

And some hindsight:

(…) Overall, the store feels less oriented towards its book-buying customers and more towards driving Prime memberships, Amazon app downloads, and Kindle & Echo sales (which might be Amazon’s objective).

Matthias

Tim Carmody asked Kottke.org readers if they had ever seen, heard, or read something on the web that literally changed their lives. From the answers:

“Almost any woodworking video by Matthias Wandel.”

Go check.