Could you point me to another merchant who offered customer-readable customer reviews before Amazon? I'm not saying there isn't one, just that when we were implementing them, I was unaware of any precedents ...

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".

Pretty sure that was meant to mean "customer reviews" the amazon product. See also in the list: "marketplace" which I don't think they expect anyone to believe they invented either.

Pioneered is the key word here. The way Amazon does reviews has become something of the industry standard.

*on the web

Wasn't Netflix the first?

Amazon started 3 years before Netflix did.

How about IMDB then?

Or insanely-fast shipping either, interstate phone orders were being affordably delivered in less than 24 hours at least in the 1980s.