Have you ever looked through customer reviews on Amazon and seen a colored label beside some reviewer that reads “VINE VOICE?”

I’ve seen these — infrequently — on various reviews of basically everything and over time began to wonder what was up with that. I came to realize that people with that label were designated as such by Amazon and were some type of “super” or privileged review whose reviews, I assumed, were supposed to count more than the rest of us. I didn’t know, but that’s how I interpretated it. And left it at that. I’ve written a lot of reviews on tons of stuff — as you’ve seen here over the years — and on sites such as Goodreads (over 1,500 book reviews), LibraryThing, Discogs, Open Library, Medium, a number of magazines, and Amazon. I don’t know how many on Amazon, but I’m sure thousands. I don’t know if there’s anyway to check and besides, some are rudimentary and say little while others have been very in-depth and for no reason other than I’ve sometimes felt compelled. I’ve always done this for free because I usually enjoy it, but because it can be so time consuming, I only review a tiny fraction of things and items I legitimately could.

Well, without knowing any details or making an attempts, I am now an Amazon VINE VOICE reviewer! Amazon sent me an invite a week or two ago and I finally agreed after looking over the program and I have to review a certain number of items over a certain period of time, objectively, which I try to do anyway, so it’s kind of cool. And I now know what the actual definition of that program is. It’s basically what I thought it was.

Here is part of Amazon’s description:

“Amazon Vine is a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers to make educated purchasing decisions.”

From what I’ve been able to glean, it sounds like a small percentage of people — somewhere between 1% and 4% of their customers who write reviews — but if you think about their customer base, that still could be a huge number of people. But since I’ve seen so few over the years and since not everyone writes reviews, let alone a lot, let alone that get views, I’m guessing the overall number isn’t as huge as it might otherwise be.

Some responsibilities and commitments come with it but nothing too crazy. And I don’t feel the need to say much more but I’m going to post the first review I’ve written with the new status, on August 16 for a simple charger for select Samsung Galaxy products. I’m also going to post a review I wrote a couple of months ago, showing the little label is retroactive, which is kind of cool. These reviews were of items I purchased for personal use, but today I got my first items to try out and review for this program — things I might not necessarily get for myself otherwise. Should be fun.

I just thought about a couple of last things to mention. One, even though I’ve been an Amazon customer from Day One, I don’t think I actually started writing any reviews until the last five years or so, though I don’t know how I could find out. It’s cool, though, because they’ve received at least 60,000 views. That said, I actually don’t have that many “Hearts” (as Amazon calls them). Barely 300! So I’m going to put a link here to my public profile there containing I don’t know how many of my reviews — all of them? — which would include tech items, music, beverages, food, clothing, books, jewelry, electronic devices, kitchen items and more. And I’m going to shamelessly invite anyone to look at any, read a few and feel free to “contribute” a heart vote (to recognize a “helpful” review) if so compelled. I don’t really expect anyone to do so, but I’d be a fool not to at least provide a link to my profile. So if you do, thanks a ton. And if you don’t, I’ll never know anyway, right? LOL! Anyway, I guess that’s all for now. Cheers!