Amazon 'Popular Highlights' Suggests It's Peeking Over Kindle Users' Shoulders

msnbc.com:

Readers of old-fashioned dead-tree books often like to underline or highlight passages they find particularly meaningful, or scribble notes for later reference. All e-book readers offer an electronic equivalent of such note-taking. But Kindle users who highlight passages will now have a record of those highlights sent back to Amazon servers, where they will be compiled and sorted to help produce a new feature called "Popular Highlights."

Read the whole story: msnbc.com

Comments

[rbenjamin]

11:14 AM on 05/13/2010

Bit off topic, but Kindle's direct competitor, the Barnes & Nobel Nook E-Reader has got to be the most unfortunately double entendre named product in recent history. It is a lot of fun hearing the NPR announcers artfully insert pauses during the brief "brought to you by" lead in to All Things Considered. I still do spit-take when I hear it.

[TimothyWMurray]

09:46 AM on 05/13/2010

Amazon has been very secretive about the kindle. We don't know how many they have sold. Nor do we know how many books for the kindle they have sold. We do not know the average selling price of a kindle book (or what percentage of books read are free).

But if Amazon were a little less secretive I would hope to find out if anyone actually uses those highlight features? It may be true that all ebook readers offer the feature of note taking. But I don't know why. Very few people actually use those features. (go ahead prove me wrong. put out some real numbers)

[thegirlnextdoor]

09:04 AM on 05/13/2010

I, of course, can not speak for her, but I think Jane Austin would be amazed and perhaps delighted to see her sweet face recognizable here in the 21st century.

[satanlite]

07:21 AM on 05/13/2010

It's all about making money no matter how it's done. Immoral. Unethical. Years of conservative Republicans laid the groundwork for this behavior, when they willfully turned anyone who was against their snooping and digging on American citizens into traitors, terrorist sympathizers, weak, etc., More than any other administration at any time, Republicans destroyed the concept of ethics and morality in business. You have no right to privacy in their business model.

[DC]

04:38 AM on 05/13/2010

The NUK is better.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/

[satanlite]

07:24 AM on 05/13/2010

Still overpriced, still not capable of being tossed in my bag and carried around for three days Dog knows where and under what condition and being pulled out when I'm stuck in a line or need a break and expect it to work. Paperbacks still win out in that regard.

[sherifffruitfly]

12:42 AM on 05/13/2010

This should be shocking to nobody. Lots of people warned about what is certain to happen if you allow companies to control the content you use. The ninja-Orwell book deletion was predicted. The snooping on you was predicted.

Purchasers have nothing to whine about - they were warned, and freely chose to ignore those warning.

[satanlite]

07:17 AM on 05/13/2010

Exactly. It is inherently creepy to have two way communication with a faceless third party monitoring your reading habits. Add "overpriced" to the mix and the Kindle is a fools toy.

[TanzaniaTeacher]

02:01 PM on 05/13/2010

You are seriously posting this comment on Huffpo. The only difference is Huffpo is free.

[Lulubelle1]

12:05 AM on 05/13/2010

As a Kindle owner, I'm compelled to tell Amazon that this is a very, very bad idea.

I'm already p.o.'d by broken promises regarding pricing of Kindle books. Those broken promises have really sent the cost curve calculations for owning and using a Kindle beyond expectations. Given that one can't re-sell a Kindle book, or share it with friends and family, one of the primary advantages was portability of my library and a guaranteed upper limit on price.

Now... Digging into my personal highlights and making them part of some global compendium is not what I signed up for. I'll pass.

Time to go back to paperbacks. And maybe to ask the leadership at Amazon if they're best buds with the privacy-deaf goobs over at Facebook.

[Christopher Daley]

11:40 PM on 05/12/2010

This cracks me up because just last month Amazon was spouting off a bunch of nonsense about protecting customer privacy. It was all a load of hooey.

Posted New Blog: (Your Snail Trail Is Showing) at www.csdaley.com

[microsoap]

04:39 PM on 05/12/2010

A Family Guy cut-away on a John Boy Walton said it best: "Can't a guy m[a]sturbate in peace??!!"

[Lalita Amos]

03:07 PM on 05/12/2010

Using their content to add value I get, but using mine? I have a Kindle and wish Amazon.com would ignore Facebook's reckless disrespect for other people's content.

[ermphd]

06:41 PM on 05/12/2010

This new wrinkle with sites like FB and apparently now Amazon seeking to leverage social networking connections is a bit disturbing. I am not a fan of having my content shared unless I agree BEFORE that act.

[Lalita Amos]

08:44 PM on 05/12/2010

Amen, Edward. Amen.

[Delf]

12:09 PM on 05/13/2010

I agree. Now, I can see the how useful it would be for college students to share their highlighting data, and to be able to see other students' highlights and/or notes. But this should be an "opt-in" choice. And I would further suggest that the opt-in should generally be on a title-by-title basis.

[amdezurik]

02:33 PM on 05/12/2010

never got one of those, but if there is not an opt-out feature I could see lots of them going unsed...