Amazon Adds US Reviews to UK Site

I'm not sure how long this has been active, but I just noticed that Amazon.co.uk has added a new function which imports reviews from the U.S. site to the respective U.K. and Canadian pages. The reviews are clearly marked as being derived from the U.S. market, and as you can see the feature is also marked as still in beta testing. This is a major update that I've been wanting to see for some time, as buyers from across the globe should be able to read reviews of a product they are considering, regardless of where those reviews originate. So kudos to Amazon for that. Only the top three most helpful reviews are shown, with a link beneath that takes you to the U.S. site to see the rest. In addition, only reviews from the U.S. site are imported. My one review on Amazon's Canadian page, for example, has not been imported elsewhere, while the U.S. reviews are now available there (although the Canadian review has only one helpful vote, so that may have ruled it out, since the lowest of the others has four). For titles that have more than three reviews on the native site already, there is just a link beneath to see U.S. reviews.







Another web page module imported to the U.K. is the "Popular Highlights" section, which allows Kindle ebook readers to make their highlights public, so that other Kindle readers with this function turned on can see them. This feature only shows up on a title's ebook listing (not on the print edition listing), and shows the most highlighted passage among Kindle readers who use the Public Notes feature. Unlike the reviews feature, this one has been rolled out everywhere except Japan (although I can't be sure, as I don't read Japanese), with the passage shown in English and the title and number of highlighters given in the site's native language.



The highlight shown above is from The Saga of Beowulf, and is my rendition of a passage from the Elder Edda Hávamál, which contains a list of old Nordic wisdom in the form of cryptic sayings (sort of like their version of fortune cookie quotes). I reworked a number of these and put them in the mouth of my wise old man Ægnir, who says little and always speaks in riddles, and apparently this is the one that readers liked the most. I guess a lot of people must lay awake and worry these days. Some things never change.