Amazon encourages product discovery in many ways, including all those customized product lists on the site’s homepage that are based on your search history and wish lists. Now the company is taking a different approach with a new feature called Amazon Spark. Tucked into the “Programs and Features” section of the Amazon iOS app is the Spark social network, in which Prime members can post photos to an Instagram-like feed. Users can tag products available on Amazon so anyone browsing the photo feed can instantly find and buy those items.
The one catch to Spark is that you must be a Prime member to post images to the social network, but any Amazon user can browse the Spark feed. If you want to post to Spark, you first have to set up an account of sorts by choosing five or more things that interest you from a word cloud. These topics range from “books” to “strange finds” to “TV binge-watching” and your choices influence the types of photos you’ll see once you start using Spark. Once you confirm a username (by default it’s the name associated with your current Amazon account, but you can change it) the Spark feed populates with posts from other users.
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