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by GraffitiTim 1961 days ago
My memory is there were some stores that had "customer reviews" before Amazon, but they were all screened by the company before being published. So every product would only have 5 star reviews.

When Amazon came out with real reviews, it seemed crazy to many at the time -- like why would you want to share bad things about your products on your own website? I thought it was awesome.
1 comments
PaulDavisThe1st 1961 days ago
OK, so now this hinges on the idea that such stores had an online e-commerce-y presence before amzn. Again, I'm not ruling it out, but I don't remember us having any real models for this.

Amazon's customer review system was created as a barrier to entry for competitors, as much as anything else.

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GraffitiTim 1961 days ago
Your memory would be more credible than mine certainly!

Perhaps I'm remembering my/people's reaction to first seeing reviews on Amazon.

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