Amazon vs. Blogspot

Today and tomorrow my organization will hold a large off-site meeting where we will discuss how we can enter the Web 2.0 world of user-created content. In preparation for that meeting, they've handed out some documents on Web 2.0 for us to read.

Having blogged for a while now, I found most of it to be self-evident. There was one significant exception. They described how Amazon has made it big while Barnes and Noble has not. The difference is in the user-created content. How is that different from what Blogspot does?

The reviews at Amazon have led me to make purchases. Posts on Blogspot blogs have led me to form opinions. The difference is that Amazon owns, collects and presents the reviews organized directly under the product being sold while Blogspot simply hosts random content. The content on any blog site is organized by the creator of that content. My web of links is created by me, not Blogger. If I choose to move my blog to another site, all I need to do is make my last post here a redirection one and nothing else changes. I can't do the same at Amazon. Their data is inextricably linked to the structure of their site.

Once the user-created content is tied into the site, then visitors have to go there to get it. Google's purchase of YouTube picked up just such an organizational structure in the form of "most viewed" and "favorite" videos. The votes and user reviews of the videos cannot be replicated elsewhere. People will go to YouTube because other people are going to YouTube.