I thought Jesse James Garrett was talking into the past with his, otherwise nice, presentation:
First: The whole "Amazon as the gold standard for this kind of thing"-thing is getting old, and consequently
we all know all of the tricks Garrett tells us they're using
Second: The whole setup of the talk where there's an "old way" with usability testing and IA and a "new way" with live instrumentation
is just so not news: All the cool kids are launching fast and trusting the feedback
from real users of the real experience these days instead of doing extensive "research" during the development phase.
There is no development phase anymore. There's only product lifespan. But I like the ideas and all that. No problems there.