Amazon.com used to have a feature where you could see what books people in different cities/states were buying.
I've looked all over Amazon's site for it tonight and can't find a trace of it. Nor have I been able to craft a Google query that either leads me to this feature or documents its demise.
Does anyone remember this feature, know where to find it, or know what became of it (and when)?
—Michael A. Cleverly
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 20:56
I was on the dev team for this project some years back. Right now if you try to access the purchase circles on amazon's site, you'll get a message that says the "purchase circles" are being rennovated. I think maybe the word should be "re-evaluated" as the whole concept was very controversial to begin with. It opened a host of privacy issues and was an open data-mine source if you knew how to use them. (most people didn't realize how granular you could get with the purchase circles data). Too bad though. privacy and company espionage issues aside, it was a fabulously fun feature.
I really liked it too, over all the country-related stuff. Maybe they should keep this only, and leave out company and government data.