Top Ten Reasons Epinions.com will last for at least a year Oct 27 '99 (Updated Aug 17 '00)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet I first heard about this site from a co-worker who left my firm to help start it. When I first heard the idea I was intrigued, but I can't say I believed the idea would take off. After all, how many startups "start up" only to fall by the wayside and burn the money of hopeful investors trying to cash in on the Internet craze. So of course I was skeptical, but I decided to log on and look around the site for a while and see what this former Internet analyst and Harvard Business School grad thought was so great about this idea. Well, now that I have written a few epinions, turned on a number of friends to the site, and put a little epinions currency in my epinions bank account, I am becoming a believer. And I have decided to compile a top ten list why this could be the Yahoo of Internet opinion sites, and why it's the best Internet start up right now. Though probably not next week. 1) The site hooks you in with its community feel, by sharing epinions and agreeing, disagreeing, or agreeing to disagree, the format creates relationships and camaraderie. I also enjoy the feature that allows people who have never met me to "trust me". Many of these people will read my epinions as soon as they go up and give me a thumbs up (or down.) 2) Every day my mini bank account climbs a little further and checking it is like checking the stock market, only my total doesn't go down and it doesn't cost me anything (except a little time to write) to build up my account. This is not only fun, but a little addictive too which adds to the stickiness of the site. 3) I can have friends and family sign up and pick up a few pennies off of their epinions as well as their friends epinions, and so on. It's like that old Breck shampoo commercial and a little like multi-level marketing. 4) I can look up the real thoughts/feelings/passions/impressions of real people in a smartly designed and easy-to-navigate site whose features and functionality are constantly improving. 5)Viral marketing: I tell my co-workers and family, they tell theirs and so on and so on. Epinions facilitates this by making telling others fun and easy to do as well as profitable. 6)The fact that they are paying people like us to create their content is the smartest business model I have ever heard of. Not only are we cheap workers, but we are happy workers and they don't even have to offer us benefits. Plus we work around the clock and don't complain. And by the time this bonus program ends at the end of the year, epinions will have more than their share of content and will be fully geared to go live and start making the fat bucks. 7)Great advertising possibilities: Imagine...each section of the site, Autos, Baby Gear, etc can have targeted advertising banners as well as associations with web-based etailers that a certain product that is being written about. This should allow them to bring in large revenues on affiliate programs for every type of site selling every type of item. 8)I imagine their preview period won't last for too long but until then, "contributing members" are more than thrilled to write twice and much as we might otherwise in order to collect many times the amount we might receive from the site. It's a motivation that demands content. 9)It allows everyday people to have their picture posted before "thousands and soon millions" of people. Probably a great way to get a date if you're single. (Also, see point number one @ community) 10)Allows people like me to be a part of creating an exciting web site that going to be one of the hot sites of the next 365 days. Why 365 days, because once people start writing for money, this becomes not much more than a glorified message board and not very useful. Are you going to trust Billy Bob from Duluth because gosh darnit, he likes Ford Pickups? Is it possible you will use these opinions to buy things, sure, but will they be the deciding factor? Not likely. Brian

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