Someone at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is interested in workplace diversity and some Marines need a little motivation to stay in shape.
These statements aren't just hunches-they're based on hard data on what employees at FDIC and USMC are reading. According to online bookseller Amazon.com's newest feature called purchase circles, the top six best-selling books at FDIC are about workplace diversity. Meanwhile, Body for Life : 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Fitness Forever is on the Marines' top ten list.
Purchase circles were introduced last week on Amazon.com. Data from more than 10 million Amazon customers' book, music and video purchases is aggregated based on zip code and domain name. For example, any e-mail address ending in .gov or .mil is grouped in the government and military categories, respectively.
Amazon then constructs bestseller lists for each specific group. Thus, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag, is more popular with "navy.mil" customers than with your average reader.
Likewise, Restoring Life in Running Waters : Better Biological Monitoring, by James R. Karr and Ellen W. Chu, is a big hit with readers at the Environmental Protection Agency, but not exactly a page-turner for the rest of us.
"We know our customers will have a lot of fun exploring and comparing lists to find items that they are most interested in purchasing," Warren Adams, director of product development at Amazon, said.
Perhaps more "fun" for federal managers is learning how employees are spending their working hours. The Amazon.com government purchasing circles are evidence that feds are shopping online while at work.
Although many of the government book purchases are work related-things like Programming Perl, or The Coldfusion 4.0 Web Application Construction Kit- others are harder to justify. Try explaining how Gary Null's Ultimate Anti-Aging Program is going to help the Library of Congress improve its computer systems or boost productivity.
The purchase circle statistics, however, don't indicate any broad trend. Amazon does not reveal how many customers at any given agency have ordered books. So, as far as anyone knows, there's only a handful of EPA employees reading John Grisham's latest legal thriller. But, the purchase circle groups do consist of at least 200 Amazon customers.
Amazon.com also lists best-selling compact-discs and videos by government agency. Purchase circles don't show individuals' purchases. If you don't want your purchasing habits calculated into in a purchase circle list, you can send an e-mail to no-purchase-circles@amazon.com
Click here to see what your co-workers are reading.
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