The Secret Life of Newt Gingrich
As the article above explains, Newt Gingrich has something of a new career on his hands these days: he's ranked number 488 among Amazon reviewers. As far as I can tell, I currently have no ranking; a friend who has written six reviews and received 39 helpful votes is ranked number 23447. Newt's 137 reviews have received more than 2,000 helpful votes. Folks in the top 25 have written hundreds or even thousands of reviews; number one, Harriet Klausner, has written more than 7,000 reviews and garnered more than 40,000 helpful votes.
Where is all this leading, you ask? To my new life goal, of course: to crack Amazon's top 1000. Right now this would require over 700 helpful votes. My 19 reviews have attracted a measly 7 helpful votes, but many of them are only a day old. (Curious about what I've reviewed? You can find it all here. Dedicated readers of this site will probably recognize quite a few reviews.) Given time, I'm sure the current group of reviews will garner more votes for me. Meanwhile, you'll probably notice a lot more reviews being posted here in the future; I've always meant to review every book or movie I consume, but I'm hoping the motivation of that little "Top 1000 Reviewer" symbol next to my name will motivate me to new levels of dedication.
And don't worry: my primary goal in public life is still to boot Bush out of office, and my primary goals in my own life are still my relationship, my job, my family, and starting grad school next winter. This is just a bit of icing for the cake.
2 comments:
Umm...well you've joined the ranks of a group of people I often wonder about.
By the way will finding your reviews not helpful harm your rating? Just curious.
Well, Paul...I'm surprised you wouldn't find my reviews helpful! (Then again, I'm betting you didn't enjoy my review of The Thorns.) I don't know if negative votes hurt my overall rating. It appears that the ranking system is based only on the number of positive votes--the person with the most "Yes" votes is number one, the person with the second most is second, etc. But negative votes do make it less likely that any given review will be "spotlighted," and spotlight reviews tend to be seen by more people and get more votes. So finding my reviews not helpful will probably be detrimental to my ranking, yes, but it's more likely that a wave of "no" votes will be detrimental to my mental health.
In any case, I'm up to 20 helpful votes (for 32 reviews, most of them posted on Thursday or Friday). Only 680+ votes to go!
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