I recently read the book Groundswell and it had me putting in a lot of thought about the social aspects of e-commerce. I'd definitely recommend it. I've done s

I recently read the book Groundswell and it had me putting in a lot of thought about the social aspects of e-commerce. I'd definitely recommend it. I've done some e-commerce consulting projects and in the end it always turns to a discussion about "best practices". Anyone whose worked on an e-commerce project has had the meeting with a client about something where the bottom line ends up being "Well... how does Amazon do it? They've invested a lot so they're probably doing it the right way". Then they get their SEO people involved, and they put in their "best practices" 2 cents. And then it's the expert on conversion rates, and on and on until the site is just like everything else. But it's following best practices! There has to be a better way, but with money at stake I think people are less likely to try something radically different than what's already working for them.