Amazon's Universal Wish List button: add anything on the web to your wish list | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's Universal Wish List button: add anything on the web to your wish list

amazon.com

17 pointsjfi11 comments

I got really excited about this when I found out about it, but have barely used it since. Maybe it's because the only person who buys me stuff from my Wish List is my Mom.

On a barely related note, I just noticed Amazon is now advertising the 'optimized for Amazon' feature of IE8. An interesting partnership.

I wish there was some magic to this, but it's just a static entry in the wish list that doesn't reflect any changes that may occur to the offering after adding it.

I didn't think much of that until I noticed myself automatically skipping past those entries visually while examining the contents of my wish list. I don't trust that information, so it's ignored.

It has been around for a while. Been using Amazon Wishlist through Shareaholic.

Likely inspired by Facebook's universal Like button. Now AMZN can know what you like (and would pay for!) across the whole web ... very smart move.

Yes, I considered adding it to my bookmark bar and then I thought about how it would make me want to buy a lot more things, so I didn't.

I find that it has the opposite effect. When I see something on the internet I want to buy, I add it to my wishlist instead of buying it. Then I forget about it until I look at my wishlist again, usually weeks later.

The best part is the added perspective and context the wishlist gives me. I can't buy that Old Smokey grill, for example, because the cast iron skillet is still in my wishlist and I want that more. And I didn't buy the skillet yesterday, so I probably won't buy it today -- sometimes status quo bias works in my favor.

I think in the short-term wishlists stop you buying things, but, because they persist you end up buying things that you would normally have forgotten about in the longer-term.

If I'm not mistaken this has been around a lot longer than facebooks like button.

Correct. At least three years as a concept.

This was available long before the Facebook button.

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