Amazon Increases Social Efforts, Starts Games Group

By Paul Thomson :: 9:48 PM

Internet retailer Amazon.com has bolstered its social media efforts after being asleep at the wheel over the past several years of momentous social growth.

The company has hired John Yurcisin as their director of social media. Yurcisin comes from Ogilvy & Mather, and will help the company develop their social strategies. He Jeff Yurcisin’s brother, who is general manager of Shopbop.com, a retail apparel website owned by Amazon.

With Zynga in their crosshairs, Amazon is also developing a new Social Games group. Postings for social games jobs are appearing from Amazon on LinkedIn and the tech jobs website Dice.com. An August posting for a Senior Social Games engineer said the group is “a cutting edge initiative within Amazon.”

Amazon’s foray into social waters is slow – only earlier this year did they add Twitter and Facebook social networking features to their Kindle e-book product.