onfocus

I've enjoyed reading the conversation philosophical exhibitionism going on in the Amazon Reviewers post from last Tuesday. In trying to find latent motivations for the 1,282nd book review on Amazon, I missed a bunch of overt motivations and they've been covered well in the comments. The most obvious motivation is knowledge sharing, as in, "hey, this cajun cookbook doesn't have a recipe for gumbo!" I still don't think this adequately explains thousands of reviews for a single product, because not every review is adding a new data point about the product.