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Nov 17 '99 (Updated Nov 23 '99)
Let me tell you why we will be mourning the death of a great web business idea in a year unless Epinions gets its act together soon:
Not yet why Epinions is doomed to fail
They call it a preview. The vernacular these days seems to be to avoid the B word at all costs. No, this site isn't in Beta, it's in preview mode. Well, when I go to the movies, the films they show previews of are already complete -- they just don't show me the whole film. Epinions gives me the whole site; the site just doesn't work properly yet.
Here just a few things I've found:
* Want to write an opinion on freezers? Fine, but check out the breadcumbing on the site. It thinks a freezer is a computer. (Top > Computers > Freezers). I guess anything that freezes up is considered a computer in Epinions land.
* Can't find what you're looking for? Suggest a product to Epinions. Then find that your suggestion disappears down a hole with no hope of recovery. Hey, I'm fine if you don't want to take my suggestion for a category. But after I go through the legwork to add the new product, at least drop me email telling me that it's been approved, rejected or put in the queue.
* Here's a great useless message, lifted almost verbatim from Yahoo (circa 1997)
"Be sure to submit your items to the most appropriate existing category, even if you plan to suggest a new one."
Hello? Who's the librarian here, you or me? If you want me to do it, at least give me some online GUIDELINES as to how to classify products into categories.
* Under Get Updates, there's a great option to "Send me and Email alert when new opinions on ... get updated". That's great, but where's the confirmation screen telling me I'm getting updates? And how come when I look at my account I can't view all the areas in which I'm receiving updates and edit them from one screen?
* Would it make a good gift? I don't know if Epinions is available gift wrapped, but on the very screen in which I'm entering this opinion, there's a series of checkboxes for me to select whom I'd like to buy the site for. I know the company has brilliant content designers like Peter Merholz on board, but silly interface glitches like this only detract from the company's credibility.
* The world's worst spell checker. Thanks for telling me I'm a crummy speller. How about suggesting better spellings instead of sending me off to dictionary.com to find the correct answer. And why do you send me to another screen where I have to read through miniscule type in an input box where I have to make my corrections. If I didn't love the web site so much, this would be a candidate for the Interface Hall of Shame.
* Where is the style guide? How was I supposed to know that I can include bold tags (< b >) on the site but not <H2> tags.
Now, on to why Epinions is doomed to fail
It's not clear how they're going to make money
Advertising banners? A very 1998 concept. Affiliate marketing? Still unproven. Content syndication? Epinions needs to build their brand first. I'd love to see the business plan. Everyone says this site is the next Ebay, but the revenue model for Ebay is pretty easily expressed "We allow buyers to connect with sellers and take a cut of the deal." How is Epinions expressing their model?
There's no good search mechanism
Search is hard. Just look at Altavista or Excite these days and you know that it's pretty impossible to get relevant results while creating a usable interface. But given the potential scale and size of the Epinions database, it's critical that they nail the whole search thing. Imagine Yahoo being successful if they didn't have good search. Maybe Peter can use some of the genius he applied to sparks.com to searching on this site.
They don't make full use of their database
Say you want to look for a highly rated toy and sort it by the price and age range the toy would be applicable for. The information is in the Epinions database because it's collected at the time the opinion is written. Why, then, is there no easy way to sort the information according to the criteria you've input? In theater, they say, don't introduce a guy in the first act unless it's going to be used in the third. In a web site, don't collect information unless you use it to the user's benefit somewhere else on the site.
E-Royalties are still just e-llusions
Supposedly Epinions will be launching their payout mechanism for Epinionaters later this year. Well, this year is almost over and if folks don't see how they're going to be reimbursed for the time and expertise soon, another web site will come along with a fulfillment process in place and you'll find folks jumping ship for the more profitable site. Under their terms of service (Section 6), they claim that they already own my written opinions and I can't use them on any other site but my own. But they haven't paid for them yet, so I don't know how they can lay claim to my work unless there's some benefit offered by them (not just a promise). Anyone a lawyer out there?
Can't review web sites
After I saw the IMAX movie Amazon, I decided to break my own rule about not reviewing movies online and posted on http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-513E-E7598B2-382FB90D-bd4 . As I was writing it, it struck me that there should be a place to review Amazon.com as well as movies about the Amazon. After all, they do earn a billion dollars a year in revenue and chances are, Epinions users have at least HEARD of the service. Then I realized that there is no category for web sites. Sure you can review ETrade (as an brokerage), but it's not categorized as online versus bricks-and-mortar (and by the way, don't try searching for Etrade or etrade in the search engine. It's not that smart). If I'm looking to buy a gift now, I want to differentiate between an online and offline store.
At last... a summary
If Epinions is going to fulfill its true potential, which is to serve as a huge community for buyers to get together and review things they have purchased, they need to spend a lot more time with us in figuring out what we need online. It seems clear that they are a collection of incredibly bright folks who have come up with a great idea. And now that they've started executing on that idea, they need to go out to real users and find out how they're doing.
P.S.
By the way, I really do care about the service, which is why I hope it does not fail.
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Epinions.com ID:
sgersh
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Location: Bay Area, California
Reviews written: 120
Trusted by: 64 members
About Me:
Up until now, I did stuff, some of which I talk about on here.
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