What Is Amazon Spark? E-Commerce Giant Launches Social Network For Shopping

It feels a bit like Pinterest and looks something like Instagram, but the newest product from Amazon is an honest-to-goodness shopping platform. Called Amazon Spark, the app shows users a feed of photographs that can be clicked on to go directly to the product pages on the e-commerce website.

Spark is currently available only for Amazon Prime customers, who become members by paying $99 a year, in the United States. It can be fired up using the Amazon app for the iPhone (an Android version for Spark is still being developed), by going to “Programs and Features” under the main menu and choosing “Amazon Spark.”

“When you first visit Spark, you'll select a few interests and we’ll create a feed of personalized content from other Amazon customers with similar interests as you. Shop your feed by tapping on product links or photos with the shopping bag icon, or interact with people by commenting or smiling on their posts. To create a post, scroll to the top of your feed and share a product or story,” the company explains on its website.

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The “smiles” feature is similar to “likes” on Facebook. Other than content shared by Amazon customers, Spark will also feature sponsored content, identified as such, from paid bloggers and social media influencers.

The feature was publicly launched Tuesday, but the company seems to have been testing it for a while, given the large number of posts already available on it Wednesday, according to an Associated Press report. AP also cited Bob Hetu, research director for retail at Gartner, who said Amazon does not seem to be pushing Spark hard at the moment, as indicated by the fact that finding the feature on the Amazon app is not “intuitive.”

An Amazon spokeswoman told Reuters: “We created Spark to allow customers to discover, and shop, stories and ideas from a community that likes what they like. When customers first visit Spark, they select at least five interests they’d like to follow and we’ll create a feed of relevant content contributed by others. Customers shop their feed by tapping on product links or photos with the shopping bag icon.”

The shopping feature doesn’t work perfectly, however, at least as of now. For instance, a Business Insider reporter who tried to buy a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses she saw on Spark was directed to an Amazon page with a slightly different model. This could be another reason why the company is not yet pushing this feature hard.

As with everything, there were reactions on social media, even as most mainstream media outlets referred to Spark as something of a hybrid between Snapchat and Instagram.

Another user wondered about the name Amazon chose for the new feature.

And at least one Twitter user was quite upset by the new feature, calling it “f------ disturbing” because it is “Pushing consumerism to the max. In a time when most of us don’t have money to afford a root canal.”

When asked if Spark was an imminent threat to Snapchat, the app it most closely resembles, Hetu said it was too soon to make such a conclusion. However, if this feature came to dislodge Pinterest in the future (the company is currently valued at about $12 billion), it would be because of Amazon’s retail connection, and not because of the purely social features, the AP report said.