Amazon thinks Thomas Gryta really likes beef jerky. He doesn’t really know why.
“I’ve ordered more energy bars and vitamins than jerky,” Business Insider’s interim corporate editor wrote in Slack. He added that his Amazon “About You” customer profile “feels like a judgy accusation from a nutritionist.”
That was just one of the messages that blew up Business Insider’s Slack on Wednesday morning after I reported that people online were having a field day looking up their own Amazon “About You” page. People noticed the shopping profiles making bizarre — sometimes unflattering — judgments, like telling one Amazon user they have “flat buttocks” or another that their husband has “skinny legs.“
The e-commerce giant launched About You in May. The page acts a bit like a customer dossier, pulling information from customers’ marketplace searches, purchase histories, saved lists, product reviews, and conversations with Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping assistant. Amazon says the goal is to connect customers with products that better fit their needs, and shoppers can update or remove details from the profile.
Naturally, Business Insider’s nosy newshounds with semi-voyeuristic relationships with the internet wanted to share what we found out about ourselves, whether brutally accurate or laughably off base.
Per our own Slack channels, we found that Amazon typically made 30 to 45-ish observations for each subject. Those inferences frequently got the transactions right, but the human conclusions were sometimes a little off.
“My wife and I share an Amazon account, so our ‘About You’ profile was a bit warped,” wrote Paul Squire, our deputy editor of homepage and programming, noting that Amazon correctly gleaned that he has a cat and a MacBook. “But it missed the mark by not realizing our second cat, Sylvie, even exists. ‘Has one cat’? Try again, Jeff Bezos.”
For Taylor Rains, a partnership editor, Amazon got a little personal about her taste in movie actors.
“One of mine is: ‘used to like Ryan Reynolds, but not so much anymore,'” she wrote on Wednesday. “How does it know?”
Still, the majority of Amazon’s judgments from our very unscientific newsroom poll proved correct.
Correspondent Madeline Berg said Amazon properly clocked that she was a stereotypical Brooklynite who prefers glass food storage and organic produce.
Deputy executive editor Taylor Berman said his account is optimized for “bathroom safety,” a finding likely tied to his need for a shower chair after he tore his Achilles tendon last May (he asked me to make sure readers knew that his other purchases were “very cool”).
Another editor, who has young kids, said Amazon reported that she frequently buys waterproof sheets.
Debbie Strong, deputy executive editor, said the system clocked her as a “boy mom” after it said she prefers Hot Wheels toy cars.
Other big themes: Amazon is very good at recognizing where we live (no surprises there), what kinds of groceries we frequently buy at Whole Foods, and if we have pets. Apparently, Business Insider’s staff likes to buy a lot of books and Pokémon cards, too (many said the cards were for their kids. Sureeeeee.)
Amazon’s crystal ball was less good at deciphering family size. Several people said their About You page incorrectly identified how many kids they had. Some relationship specifics were off too. It incorrectly said one editor had a girlfriend named “Barry.”
As for yours truly, who knows what Amazon knows about me — I haven’t had an account for years. Like my colleagues, I will be uncomfortably forthcoming with my results if that changes.
Do you have a funny story or screenshot to share from your Amazon “About You” page? Send it to [email protected] and we might include it in an upcoming story!
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