Amazon's Former Chief Scientist on Influence, Twitter's Fake Audience, and iPad Sex Appeal

Andreas Weigend knows how to influence people. As the former chief scientist at Amazon, Weigend helped implement a series of ingenious tools to help customers "make better decisions," from recommended purchases and one-click checkouts, to wish lists and book-interest sharing. With our recent launch of the Influence Project, we spoke with Weigend about what "influence" means on the Web. Weigend, a professor at Stanford, approached the subject philosophically, picking apart the complicated...