TheWayoftheWeb

It’s easy within the Web 2.0 technology bubble to poke fun at other industries that don’t get it – for instance, Hollywood complaining about piracy, and yet still releasing films in different countries at different times.

And yet there is still a huge U.S. bias in software online. I know a lot of the big online brands are U.S based, and we still talk about Silicon Valley and San Francisco in reverential terms (But at least the UK has London, Brighton…and maybe one day, Peterborough!). But surely global online brands should understand it’s a global marketplace better than anyone, and either launch a new product in a Beta for people to test, or go global straight away?

For instance, I like the idea of Amazon’s new universal wish list, and really want to see how it compares with sites like Stylehive and ThisNext. All three use bookmarklet tools to let you save items from wherever you see them on the internet, and then either list them for people to buy for you (Amazon), or share them with other people to establish yourself as a trendsetter (Stylehive,ThisNext).

But obviously I can’t try it yet, because I’m not in America (Unless I go to the time and effort of spoofing my address and going through a proxy server of course!)

Instead, an enquiry to Amazon got a polite response:

‘This feature is currently only available on Amazon.com and unfortunately we are unable to highlight a date when this feature will be used on Amazon.co.uk.’

As a bonus, some publisher/Amazon confusion also saw UK pre-orders for Seth Godin‘s new book (pre-ordering was also a condition of joining his invite-only Triiibers group) all cancelled.

This isn’t just Amazon, of course. They just stick in my mind because both these things happened in the space of a week. Twitter hasn’t managed a mobile phone deal for SMS tweets in Europe, Pandora stops outside the U.S., etc, etc.

Is there some kind of trade embargo I wasn’t aware of? Or is medieval Europe just not keeping up with the Americans?