Amazon Connect

Amazon.com has a new pilot program called Amazon Connect, where the authors publish a blog that shoppers can read as they're trying to decide whether to buy the product. In a way, this is both using the blog to sell the author's work and using Amazon to distribute the blog.

I envision a potential near future where related content can be distributed via Amazon's powerful recommendation engine - for example a broadband show that's advertised on the main screen of shoppers who would be likely to buy the book on which the show is based. In a sense you are doing three things: enhancing the shopping experience on Amazon, selling the book buy increasing awareness, and microdistributing the content by only advertising it to people who's other choices suggest that they might be interested in the content. The same concept could be applied to any website that uses a recommendation engine - though Amazon and the sites it hosts are the best at this.