Open source lessons from Amazon & Firefox

If I hadn't been behind in my blogging last week, I would have mentioned this "wow" news from Amazon.com that was picked up by some Church of the Customer posts (here and here). Basically, Amazon is rolling out this wiki feature that allows customers to create and edit product information, which, it's hoped anyway, will be more valuable and robust than the current Reviews. The feature is pretty hard to find, but the COC posts have some screen captures to illustrate what they're up to. More recently, COC talked about another Amazonian innovation: threaded discussions. Gets you thinking about what we could do with the good ol' catalog, doesn't it?

These new developments are some of many marketing maneuvers designed to get patrons in on the act (for regular readers, you already know I'm a fan of this approach). Take Firefox's latest open source marketing campaign that asks avid users to create and submit video testimonials (phase one). The second phase of their campaign will invite students and professionals to send in their ads. Neat!