Amazon Discordance?
For several months now, Amazon has fielded a variety of unusual features as part of its “Search Inside this Book” effort (which has been around since at least 2003). As my colleagues and I have been debating the usefulness/usability of tag clouds, it was perhaps inevitable that we’d scrutinize the pseudo-tag feature Amazon calls “Concordance.” Like many who have commented on this feature - which generates a flickr-like display of the 100 most used words in a given book - we’re more amused than impressed.
We’d agree with Signal vs. Noise that the Concordance is not really tags at all - even though the graphic depiction of information relies on a similar device (font size/boldness proportional to relative frequency) to those of tag interfaces. The motif inspired Mark Hedlund to ponder the search engines for tags. We’re not so ambitious (yet). We got distracted by the thing itself, and strayed from our tag discussion into one where we wondered what the heck the Concordance was good for. The folks at Wired apparently did too. They were told by Amazon execs as well as quotable types from places with names like The Institute for the Future of the Book that the idea (no surprise) is to use the massive trove of digital book-related information to sell more books.
The Amazon exec was honest enough to state flatly that they are experimenting, with the goal being to figure out ways to get people into the “long tail” of the Amazon catalogue. Wired was understandably more excited by the SIPs (statistically improbable phrases) that Amazon also features, vs. the Concordance. From the point of view of book sales, SIPs (unlikely phrases that occur surprisingly frequently in a book) are maybe more useful - especially because Amazon links them to other books that also use those phrases. So, you can use “adaptive unconscious” from Malcom Gladwell’s Blink to find a bunch of other writings showcasing the same words.
But again, the Concordance? We’re still wracking our brains over why or how this information is valuable. In fact, it’s disappointing. Like Wired (but before we read their article) we just had to type in Moby Dick. And, duh, “whale” as well as “ahab” were the most prominent words. And, although it seems clear that Amazon has weeded out articles of speech, they hung on to the prepositions and some pronouns for whatever reason. This renders the summary additionally disappointing. I was really hoping for some kind of alethiometer-like snapshot that would “reveal” the book to me. Of course, it appears that like that fictional device for predicting the future, you’d need to work harder than I’d want to to use the Concordance to interpret anything.
Then we wondered if the problem was the Concordance in a vacuum. Maybe, if you looked at similar books, you could get a feel for how they differed by comparing Concordances. So we tried it. Results are mixed. If you look at two books about Donald Rumsfeld (Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait and The Rumsfield Way: Leadership Wisdom of a Battle Hardened Maverick) you don’t really get anywhere.
Here’s a comparison of the Concordances for Portrait and Maverick.
Much staring at the two Concordances - which, btw, cannot be compared within Amazon; you either have to open separate windows or tabs, or take different screen shots - reveals some potentially interesting considerations. For one, Portrait apparently does not mention 9/11 all that often. At least not often enough to crack the top 100. Whereas Maverick definitely does. Also, oddly, Portrait does not dwell on intelligence (in whatever sense of the word), terrorism or terrorists as much - though it clearly mentions “war” more often.
Might this help me decide which book to buy (assuming I was even interested)? A solid “maybe.” From the titles, it’s sort of clear that Portrait is likely to be an uncritical look at DR and Maverick a business-oriented work that might rely heavily on the subject’s own observations. This is confirmed by editorial reviews. I suppose the Concordance might tip me permanently away from a book about the current Secretary of Defense that fails to emphasize 9/11, terrorism or intelligence while somehow mentioning war a whole lot.
But again, an awful lot of work. Looking forward to what - if anything - Amazon does with this and other features…we suspect this one will end up getting junked or considerably modified.
