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Epinions International(e), Part II: Comparing Epinions with EU-sites, or, 'The Jewel in the Crown'Nov 19 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Comparing and contrasting Epinions with the European review sites Dooyoo.com & Ciao.com.
This is the second part of an opinion I wrote lamenting the ‘US-centred’ nature of Epinions (entitled: Epinions International(e): 'REVIEWERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!', or, 'Where art thou, Madhuri Dixit?' @ http://www.epinions.com/content_2344198276). One of the main points of that article was the suggestion that Epinions expand beyond the US, both in the sense of links to non-US shops and more importantly the capacity to review non-US items (as even those ‘foreign items’ [like Bollywood films] widely available in US are not listed on Epinions). I received a number of very helpful comments on this article. In the second instalment of this opinion I would like to compare and contrast Epinions with two European review-sites, and perhaps even suggest ways in which Epinions might be improved. Thanks to cr01 for directing me to these 2 sites: Dooyoo.com & Ciao.com. Both Dooyoo.com and Ciao.com have UK, German, Italian, French and Spanish sites. I’ve only explored the UK-versions, I understand that there are some differences between the different national versions, so my review may not be entirely accurate in the case of the Continental versions. Overall, let me say first that I have found thus far that Dooyoo is vastly superior to Ciao, and I like Dooyoo very much. Dooyoo has some advantages over Epinions (and some disadvantages as well)—perhaps some of the favourable aspects of Dooyoo could be implemented on Epinions? I’ll concentrate my review on Dooyoo, which I see as the better of the two sites, but I’ll also mention Ciao when appropriate. Organisation – Products & Services ---------------------------------- While Epinions is organised by actual products—that is, for instance in the Books category specific editions of books are listed along with information such as no. of pages, publisher, price(s), &c.—both Dooyoo and Ciao are organised a bit differently. Instead of listing the Knopf edition of V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life [plug: see my review of this item @ http://www.epinions.com/content_46388383364], they simply have a Naipaul category (in the Authors category under the Books category) under which ‘Half a Life’ is a sub-category, without listing any particulars about the item. When one writes a review, the reviewer is expected to provide info such as price paid. Overall, the Dooyoo-layout has advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that it simply isn’t as well organised as Epinions and they don’t have as many items listed (Ciao has even less it seems—though Ciao does have a Bollywood category! [for the relevance of this fact, see the 1st part of this opinion @ http://www.epinions.com/content_2344198276]). For instance, while Dooyoo has Homer’s Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid, they do not list Apuleius’s The Golden Asse at all [2nd plug: see my review of Apuleius’s book @ http://www.epinions.com/content_46722420356]. However, when, for instance in Books, an author is listed, Dooyoo also has a sub-category of the sort Rushdie, Salman – in general, which is nice for two reasons. The first is that one can write general views on an author without being forced to review a particular book (which is what this subcategory is really intended for). The second is that if Dooyoo does not list a particular novel by an author—for example they do not list Rushdie’s novel Fury [http://www.epinions.com/content_46063521412]%97one can put a review of that novel under the General sub-category. However, when an author is simply not listed on Dooyoo, this option is unavailable (e.g., the Apuleius case). Another nice thing about both Dooyoo and Ciao (though I have not had the opportunity to fully test this option out yet) is that members can suggest items. For some reason the suggestion form at Dooyoo doesn’t seem to be operating at the moment, so I cannot evaluate the effectiveness of this option. But I like the idea—I wish Epinions had something like this. One of the other things I like about Dooyoo is their Speaker’s Corner where members write opinions on topics like ‘War on Afghanistan’, ‘Should Cannabis Be Legalised’, ‘Should the House of Lords be Abolished’, &c. (In addition, one is credited for reviews in these categories, unlike on Epinions). Organisation – Member Accounts ----------------------------------------- The member account layout at Dooyoo is excellent. It is similar in many respects to Epinions (one can choose to list, or not list, real name, e-mail, bio, web of trust [called ‘circle of friends’ on Dooyoo], &c.) and gives a list at the bottom of the page of all of the items reviewed by the member. However, it has a number of nice features absent from Epinions: 1) One can choose to view all reviews by a member on a single page, rather than having to page through several pages if the author has a lot of reviews. Not that important, but nice. 2) In your own account you can choose to view all of the opinions you’ve rated and all of the comments you’ve written—quite nice (I wish Epinions had this feature in particular). 3) One can jump directly to the comments or ratings on an item without having to first go to the review itself. Again, not critical, but nice. Another nice feature of Dooyoo is that it updates your account constantly, whereas Epinions seems to lag behind quite a bit. Opinion rating ----------------- Dooyoo (& Ciao) work very similarly to Epinions in rating other members’ reviews: there are 4 choices: very useful, useful, somewhat useful, not useful. And one can write comments about a review as well. But the feature I think I like best about Dooyoo is the ‘Crown Reviews’. In addition to giving a review a rating, one can also nominate it for a ‘crown’—essentially if you think a review is really excellent you can suggest that it be a ‘Crown Review’. I like this a lot—how many times have you come across a review you thought was fantastic and really deserving of recognition, but the best you can do on Epinions is to rate it Most Helpful…. ‘Crown Reviews’ have higher prominence—there’s a special section where you can choose to view only crown reviews. Also, a little crown icon appears next to 'Crown Reviews' if you are looking at the listing of a member’s reviews or at a listing of the reviews of a particular item. There’s also an additional financial bonus of ‘Crown Reviews’, which I’ll describe below. Ciao has a vaguely similar system of ‘Premium Reviews’, which also gain similar prominence (more below)—however, members can’t nominate other member’s reviews like on Dooyoo. What I really like about the ‘Crown Reviews’ is that they make Dooyoo a “Review-centred” rather than “Reviewer-centred” site like Epinions (Ciao, despite their ‘Premium Reviews’ is more like Epinions in being “Reviewer-centred”). Reviews on Epinions really gain prominence as a reviewer gains prominence, whereas on Dooyoo a really good review can be prominent even if the reviewer is not very prominent. This also tends to promote very high quality reviews. Also, I find it a bit frustrating on Epinions that many of my reviews do not receive many hits since I’m not (yet) a top reviewer—and it’s a bit of a circular system: someone who is a top reviewer on Epinions tends to remain a top reviewer because they’re prominent; and it’s difficult, as a less-visible reviewer, to have one’s reviews read and thus gain prominence. Incentives & Payment -------------------------- On Dooyoo, every time another member reads one of your reviews you receive 30 of what they call Dooyoo Miles (for no obvious reason). Essentially 30 Dooyoo Miles = 3p [p=pence; 100 pence=£1=US$1.43]. Dooyoo Miles can be redeemed in a number of ways: cash [cheque], donations to charity, voucher for online shops like Amazon.co.uk. However, unfortunately, if one does not have an address in the UK, currently the only way one can redeemed the Miles is via donations to charity. Which seems a pity because I thought the voucher for Amazon was an excellent idea for non-UK members. Nonetheless, I think something like a voucher-programme might be an option which Epinions could add for the benefit of non-US members (minus the restriction on having a US-address, of course). The ability to redeem Epinions accounts via merchandise through Amazon which help alleviate some of the problems selden describes [http://www.epinions.com/content_1229627524] for non-US members of Epinions. (Hopefully Dooyoo will change their policy too….). Non-UK members of Ciao currently have no way of redeeming their money earned. Ciao only awards 1p every time a member reads one of your reviews, and then only in very select categories (things like toothpaste; reviews of books, films, &c. don’t earn you anything on Ciao anymore). The other nice thing about ‘Crown Reviews’ is that they give the reviewer a bonus of 1500 Dooyoo miles [=£1.50]. Similarly, Ciao has a ‘Premium Fund’ out of which they award various reviews bonuses ranging from 50p to £15—chosen by the staff at Ciao. Overall Quality of Reviews --------------------------------- I’m very impressed with the quality of reviews at Dooyoo, much less so at Ciao. I think the incentive programme that Dooyoo has promotes good reviews, even more so than does Epinions (though certainly I’ve read quite a number of excellent reviews at Epinions too, don’t get me wrong….). Concluding Thoughts -------------------------- In summary, I really like the ‘Crown Review’ feature of Dooyoo and the fact that this makes Dooyoo much more review-centred than reviewer-centred and I think it would be good if Epinions could implement a similar feature. It would also be nice if one could suggest items at Epinions (this would address, at least in part, the concern I raised in the first part of this opinion). And though the voucher programme at Dooyoo currently doesn’t really help foreign members (unfortunately), if Epinions could implement a similar programme, without US-residency restrictions, I feel this would greatly alleviate the problems of non-US members. Again, I welcome comments on this opinion, as well as suggestions as to how we(?) might suggest to Epinions the addition of some of the advantageous features of Dooyoo (particularly a parallel to Dooyoo's Crown Reviews).  |
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