Epinions
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Epinions.com is a review site that was established in 1999. Epinions was acquired by Shopping.com (known as DealTime.com at the time of the acquisition) in 2003, which in turn was acquired by Ebay in 2005. At Epinions, visitors can read reviews about a variety of items to help them decide on a purchase.
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[edit] Reviews
Contributors do not need to be computer experts to add reviews; it is just a matter of filling in a form, but registration is required. Writers are encouraged to give their own personal views, and write about their personal satisfactions or dissatisfactions. This is the website's aim: To give future customers a preview of what they might expect should they decide to buy a certain product or use a certain company, or even watch certain television shows or movies. There is no maximum opinion length, but the minimum opinion length has changed several times. There are two types of reviews: Express Reviews which are 20-199 words long and Regular reviews which are 200 words or more.
Epinions is a place where members can write reviews of consumer products ranging from automobiles to toilet paper, media including music and movies to children's toys. Epinions is similar to other consumer review sites in the same vein, such as ReviewCentre, Ciao.com and Dooyoo. There is also a section called the Writer's Corner where contributors may write about almost anything. To post a review, members must rate the product or service on a rating scale from 1 to 5 stars, one star being the worst rating, five stars being the best. For several years now, all opinions also come with brief Pro and Con sections, and a "The Bottom Line".
Epinions.com originally had both an Eroyalties plan and an Income Share Plan. The Eroyalties plan paid writers per read of their opinion. The payment per read has steadily decreased and finally been unilaterally abolished, partly because cheating was taking place.
Epinions still offers Income Share, which rewards reviewers for how much help they've given users in deciding to purchase products. Epinions even claims that you are also rewarded for helping visitors not purchase an item. It is not possible to verify either claim, as the Income Share Formula is secret.
Another income aspect, which ended in 2001 was referrals, where users were paid for getting people to sign up. Since the end of the dot-com era, payment dwindled and then plateaued to a level that is much lower then the earlier days and non-existent for many users. Certain categories, such as electronics, pay better than other categories, such as movies.
All members can rate opinions by others as Off-Topic (OT), Not Helpful (NH), Somewhat Helpful (SH), Helpful (H), and Very Helpful (VH). Express Opinions are rated "Show" (S) or "Don't Show" (NS).
Members can also decide to "trust" or "block" (formerly known as "distrust") each other. All the trust and block relationships interact and form a hierarchy known as the Web of Trust. This Web of Trust (WOT) combines with rating to determine in what order opinions are shown to readers. The order members see depends on their own ratings and their own trust and block choices. The order a visitor sees is determined by a default list of members a visitor supposedly trusts. The WOT formula is secret.
Some members have titles that designate certain roles, status, privileges or benefits. These roles, the titles and the way members are selected for these have changed more than once. Since 2002 the main titles are Advisor, Top Reviewer and Category Lead. The Advisors have greater rating weight and access to an additional rating, Most Helpful (MH). The Top Reviewers have their reviews given an improved placement.
The most powerful title is that of Category Lead: a Category Lead enjoys all the Advisor and Top Reviewer benefits, has even greater rating power and chooses the Advisors and Top Reviewers for a category. A Category Lead can even add new products and services to the epinions.com database for others to review. Category Leads are members that have become temporary epinions.com contractors; they sign a temp contract, receive an undisclosed fee, and enjoy access to privileged information after signing a non-disclosure agreement.
[edit] Reputation culture
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Epinions.com’s reputation system is not abuse-proof. Abuse of the site has always been a problem. There are so-called Rating Circles whose members "trust" and "rubberstamp" each other’s reviews and are often aggressive towards members who dare to give them anything but the highest rating. They play these rating games to gain more rating power and skew the Income Share payments. These "circle-raters" often block good members who do not play along with their gaming of the system.
Early in 2000 the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed co-founder Mike Speiser and early member Brian Koller, with Speiser claiming the system prevents advertorials from getting exposure, but Koller saying: "There is a lot of 'You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,' and mutual admiration societies. You recommend me and mine, I’ll do the same for you." [1] Late in 2004, an epinions.com Category Lead (contractor) with the handle scmrak, wrote about "trustitution."[2] He claimed that rating circles were still active, and that it is obvious that the site is being successfully gamed.
[edit] Limitations
Because ordinary members cannot add new items, many products are not listed at all. Many products that are listed have no reviews, so in some ways the site now functions as more of a comparison shopping site than as a review site. Many products that do have reviews have just one or two, not enough to form a community of opinion. Although it is possible to sort products based on rating, it is not possible to exclude the ratings that are based on a very small number of reviews.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle Jan 22, 2000 - EVERYONE'S A CRITIC: A Worthy Epinion Can Earn You Some Cash
- ^ Welcome to Bambi's Epinions House of Trustitution
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