Amplicate: love & hate

The Internet has spawned some strange new services, and Amplicate is an exemplar of this tendency. Rather than allow comments on a certain topic to remain scattered across a million blogs and news sites, Amplicate scoops them all up and aggregates them on its own website. The site divides the comments into Love/Hate (ambivalent doesn't get a run) and then allows users to vote opinions up and down the list. As with much Internet comment, levels of bile are often high and the imagery scatalogical. As part of the recent trend towards interpreting and categorising the Amazonian flood of Internet data, Amplicate is quite interesting. As a way of keeping a finger on the Internet zeitgeist, it might also be useful, especially for companies marketing consumer reaction to their own (and those of competitors) products. Overall, however, the main interest is of the car crash variety -- slowing down as you cruise by, wanting to avert one's eyes, but not quite managing it.