Amazon's user participation, sans incentive

The thing I've always found so impressive about Amazon, and now sites like Digg, is the tremendouns amount of user participation they get for their site, without compensatory incentives. For instance, I've written as fairly large amount of tech book reviews, which I've posted to Amazon, but I've never gotten anything monetary or a discount which I can apply to purchases at the site in return.

Such would be nice, but it won't stope me from posting. Because I just enjoy the process. I'm sure people have brought up more than once a volume-based rewards system for reviewers or those who assemble recommendation lists. I guess the economic reality is that until the day traffic starts to taper off for whatever reason (superior competitor, lack of interest, pricing, etc.) such won't be put into play. It's a new take on "whatever the market will bear" - if we've got this phenomenal feedback engine going full-steam already, why pay? To have a trump card tucked away to sweeten the deal later, if necessary, is strategic.

This is a huge shift in the retailer-consumer relationship. It's like a focus group without the honorarium - that's the kind of thing marketers die for.