Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

But with E-mail, one disgruntled customer—who may or may not have a legitimate point—can place his or her concern in the Inbox of thousands of other customers. It may be time-consuming, but with the right software, it’s not that time-consuming. Besides, angry customers (especially the crazier ones) tend to find the time.

In this specific Amazon situation, the grouping is not solely customers; it’s an exchange of buyers and sellers. You can now creep into the “if one person cuts a break for one customer and drops the price another 8 percent, do they really want that screamed to every other potential customer?”

Amazon listed four reasons for its effort: increasing “privacy and security of buyer-to-seller communication”; resolving “disputes faster and better by ensuring that reviewers have access to all buyer/seller communications”; reducing “the number of A-Z claims filed by encouraging and verifying pre-claim buyer/seller communication”; and eliminating “unnecessary contacts during claims investigations.”

Those points are all legitimate, and you’ll note that Amazon neglects to note the treasure trove of additional CRM data it will gather. Consumers tend to speak more freely when it’s point-to-point rather than when their comments are posted in a public forum, even if they know—but will probably forget—that the retailer is monitoring and capturing the exchanges.

The “unnecessary contacts” point is especially intriguing. Is that “unnecessary” in the sense of “you’re saying things to each other that we don’t want said about our brand” or “we can’t police against SPAM, obscenity, death threats or anything else if it’s happening outside our earshot”? To be fair, it’s clearly both.

As chain executives accelerate efforts by joining social sites, setting up their own pages on those established sites and even creating their own forums, they need to think through little things such as E-mail access.

Setting up a community to help with brand building and making sales is fabulous. But even a friendly community needs a police force. The question is: Where to draw the line between a “protect and serve” group of guardians and a 1984-style group of monitor-everything overseers for the good of the public? Amazon seems to have made the right choice here. It understands that protecting its citizens and learning a lot more about them don’t have to be mutually exclusive. That’s true as long as the residents don’t object and opt to move to a less gated community.