3 ms·

I disagree. What is needed is focus, not "less". Finding and buying computer parts is infinitely easier on Newegg than any B&M site, because that's what Newegg

I disagree. What is needed is focus, not "less". Finding and buying computer parts is infinitely easier on Newegg than any B&M site, because that's what Newegg does. They have more computer parts than Amazon, not less, but they sort and filter and organize it much much better. I think Amazon just doesn't care about people who are shopping for items with very exact specificationd in mind. It's an edge case for them. Most people go to Amazon when they want "a tv" or "a teapot". Whenever I need something specific, I just look up "best X with Y feature review". Almost always I get an Amazon link to the type of thing I was looking for.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Amazon's goal to be the world's retailer, selling everything, creates an incentive for vendors to appear in as many search results as possible. Even if the payoff is small, it's a net positive. For both Amazon and the shopper, most results subtract from the utility of the experience. The incentives problem is that: - For vendor, more hits == benefit. - For Amazon, irrelevant search == small cost, fix == high effort. - For shopper, irrelevant search == high cost, switching retailers == low cost The equilibrium point is shitty Amazon search.
- anchpop 7y ago
  - For shopper, irrelevant search == high cost, switching retailers == low cost Is this backward?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    No. For a shopper, not being able to find what you want (or trust what you find) is a high cost. The cost of switching to another site, or shopping mode, is low. More to the point: it's vastly lower than the shopper being able to effectively fix Amazon's search. This is a general principle of networks and positive- vs. negative-value members or additions. The naive Metcalf's Law notion, that all members of a network are a net positive, is false, and even the far more useful Tilly-Odlyzko formulation (V = nlog(n)) fails to account for nodes contributing a negative cost. Since all* information imposes an attention cost, you can approximate the actual network value as: V = n*log(n) - k*n Where k is some cost constant. In fact the size of the network is determined by the cost constant. The lower the constant, the larger the sustainable network size. At some point, adding more members reduces total network value. Worse, since you have high-value and low-value contributors, and quite possibly a higher value-sensitivity of high-value members, as the network value approaches and passes the zero point, high-value members tend to defect. That's what happens as a social network tends to low-quality posts, content, and discussion. Or a shopping market tends to counterfeit goods, mislabeled content, fraud and the like. Just as MySpace found itself walking dead, and numerous earlier retail establishments, Amazon could find itself on the wrong side of this line and quickly. Also: though I represent k as a constant, it's better to think of it at any given point in time as being mostly undifferentiated amongst nodes. But over time that constant might increase or decrease, whether due to the behaviour of nodes, additions or deletions in nodes, or in environmental factors.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Amazon's goal to be the world's retailer, selling everything, creates an incentive for vendors to appear in as many search results as possible. Even if the payoff is small, it's a net positive. For both Amazon and the shopper, most results subtract from the utility of the experience. The incentives problem is that: - For vendor, more hits == benefit. - For Amazon, irrelevant search == small cost, fix == high effort. - For shopper, irrelevant search == high cost, switching retailers == low cost The equilibrium point is shitty Amazon search.

anchpop 7y ago
- For shopper, irrelevant search == high cost, switching retailers == low cost Is this backward?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  No. For a shopper, not being able to find what you want (or trust what you find) is a high cost. The cost of switching to another site, or shopping mode, is low. More to the point: it's vastly lower than the shopper being able to effectively fix Amazon's search. This is a general principle of networks and positive- vs. negative-value members or additions. The naive Metcalf's Law notion, that all members of a network are a net positive, is false, and even the far more useful Tilly-Odlyzko formulation (V = nlog(n)) fails to account for nodes contributing a negative cost. Since all* information imposes an attention cost, you can approximate the actual network value as: V = n*log(n) - k*n Where k is some cost constant. In fact the size of the network is determined by the cost constant. The lower the constant, the larger the sustainable network size. At some point, adding more members reduces total network value. Worse, since you have high-value and low-value contributors, and quite possibly a higher value-sensitivity of high-value members, as the network value approaches and passes the zero point, high-value members tend to defect. That's what happens as a social network tends to low-quality posts, content, and discussion. Or a shopping market tends to counterfeit goods, mislabeled content, fraud and the like. Just as MySpace found itself walking dead, and numerous earlier retail establishments, Amazon could find itself on the wrong side of this line and quickly. Also: though I represent k as a constant, it's better to think of it at any given point in time as being mostly undifferentiated amongst nodes. But over time that constant might increase or decrease, whether due to the behaviour of nodes, additions or deletions in nodes, or in environmental factors.