Women in Technology

You are right in pointing out that users of Amazon and eBay are automatically "active" participants to some extent. Nevertheless, one has to wonder to which extent the popularity of a product really matters in the purchase decision and whether the features for which Amazon is praised aren't the more esoteric ones. Tailoring a website silently to better meet a user's supposed needs is an honorable goal but how many users do look at it? What percentage of Amazon or eBay users head other directly to the search box to type in the title of the book, CD or DVD they are interested in purchasing?

The transparency of Page Rank, in a similar way, is a great system that allows the search engine to steadily improve without user participation. Then, one needs to ask whether the "improvements" in the algorithm really bring real world improvements for users. Google excels at what it does but is what it does what most users want?

I do not think that a transparent feature is irrelevant and agree with you that, the more seamless something can be, the more efficient it is. However, most users couldn't care less about all the features that are offered to them. While we geeks may be tempted to see Amazon's success as the sign of a successful Web 2.0 implementation, it probably has a lot more to do with their advertising on buses and being mentioned in national newspapers.

FJ