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epinions rant [1022.1999] Naval of epinions wrote me about my comment that epinions doesn't have anything on the likes of Enforma. I wrote this in response, pointing out a few things that I thought epinions could improve. Hey Naval, You know, it's really awesome that you actually pay attention what people have to say about your service. I realize that this is still just a preview - I can't wait to see what's coming up. On a somewhat related subject: One thing I've been seriously thinking about is building an Atlanta portal. I would *love* to set up something like the epnions software to rank stuff like mechanics, local phone companies, mortgage brokers / real estate agents, dog pounds (there was a nightmare inducing expose of a local kennel on TV a few months back), local banks, insurance companies.. Basically, any service where you go in not knowing what you're going to get and hope that you don't come out screwed. I guess that if I can read about a product in a hundred magazines, or (as with books) read a sample chapter, or (with TV channels) just go watch it, I'm less likely to look for someone else's opinion [or epinion!]. But: show me something I'm interested in but with which I don't have much experience, and I'm more likely to ask around. Have you ever heard of the concept of Social Proof? It's basically the idea that people will do what other people do. So, people will look at a book just because it's on the bestseller list. Or, all us webloggers start doing epinions. :) As the popularity and accessibility of an item goes up, the need for a second opinion goes down. (They're still great to have, but they're not *needed*) It's the small markets, especially, where epinions would really come in handy. Examples: services in a particular city, self help seminars/trainers, highly technical books, travel destinations (which of course you're already doing). Maybe that just means hiring new Category Managers, but I wonder what would happen if there were some easy way for webmasters such as myself to simply create our own "my epinions" site. I can almost do that now, just by writing a bunch of epinions and linking to them, but I have to wait for epinions to approve anything I write on an unpopular product, and may not be included at all. Why is this the case, when there are already two mechanisms for filtering out crappy articles? Also, again for atlanta - you've got the travel guides, and there's cell phone plans, but they're completely unrelated. All the products are divided logically, which is good, but why not have an alternate tree for geographic divisions? Eg: By Area > US > Georgia > Atlanta Which might contain:
Anyway. I didn't mean to write that much. Thanks for responding. I only rant because I care. :) Cheers, Michal |