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My memory is there were some stores that had "customer reviews" before Amazon, but they were all screened by the company before being published. So every product would only have 5 star reviews.

When Amazon came out with real reviews, it seemed crazy to many at the time -- like why would you want to share bad things about your products on your own website? I thought it was awesome.

OK, so now this hinges on the idea that such stores had an online e-commerce-y presence before amzn. Again, I'm not ruling it out, but I don't remember us having any real models for this.

Amazon's customer review system was created as a barrier to entry for competitors, as much as anything else.

Your memory would be more credible than mine certainly!

Perhaps I'm remembering my/people's reaction to first seeing reviews on Amazon.

I'm not quite sure about the timeline of which was first, but didn't ebay have heavy emphasis on seller/buyer reviews early on?

It was the entire (original) business model of "Epinions".