Epinions Version 2.0 - My Thoughts Feb 22 '01    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Rick Bragg - Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg From $6 260 Drum Machine Patterns From $8 The Bottom Line Version 2.0 doesn't really change much. Its changes are mostly cosmetic but overall it's still the same Epinions we know and love. I came onto the Epinions' scene back in November. I was instantly addicted. I wrote about thirty reviews in twenty some days and began to realize that maybe, just maybe, I should step away for a while. Being a college sophomore I need just about all the time I can get. Maybe this wasn't the best use of it. Then something nice happened. Epinions shutdown and I could relax for a bit. Upon re-opening it took me a while to re-adjust. "If you woke up on Mars, you'd have trouble with the gravity too, for a little while. You'd adjust, I adjusted." I figure every Epinion needs a good quote from Adam Duritz (lead singer of the Counting Crows). So after adjusting to my new surroundings, I realized all in all I liked the new design. But here are some thoughts. Profile For those of you who have elaborate profiles filled with HTML coding you'll notice some problems when going to update it after the new site change. It seems the profile's now have "issues" with long "words" or in this case any string over XXX characters (I haven't taken the time to count the limit). So upon updating my profile with my new reviews and such I noticed that I had to re-format and re-edit just about everything. Not too big of a deal but frustrating none the less. I don't understand the major issue behind long strings, but then again I'm not the server admin. Front Page - Featured Reviewer As I was adjusting to the new site layout I was finding that every time I clicked on an Epinion from the front page I was taken to the front page of that item instead of the Epinion itself. This became rather frustrating; I almost began seeing it as false advertising. I then took the time to squint and noticed that I had to hit "read this opinion" in small text at the bottom. Not a huge deal but I think it detracts and misleads people who aren't familiar with the site. I feel that if you're going to draw people in with the first lines from someone's Epinion you might as well take them to that review first. If they want more info on the product they'll click back to the product main page. Just my 2 cents on that. Front Page - New Opinions I guess I don't really like how now we get half as much "viewage" on the front page as we did before the changeover, when we had "The Good" and "The Bad." This isn't a major issue but god knows most of our hits come from the first 10 seconds on the main page. The more time we get there the better. I think that this should be re-incorporated into the front page. There's enough space for it. Love It - Hate It - "Hate It" that it's gone Ah, why did this have to go? The Love It/Hate It list allowed for a nice screenshot of a particular viewers taste. I think that this should be re-incorporated, perhaps along with product ratings. Love It/Hate It lists allowed people to show how they strongly felt about a product. What we have now does not. Content Partners - When? I miss my content partner site. I can't get referrals now and who knows what I'm doing on site hits. I think everyone knows that content partner sites are a big source of revenue for capitalist reviewers (and there's no problem with being a capitalist if you're in college and need the money! :) ). Hopefully this will be brought back to us soon. I guess I don't see the major issue bringing it back but then again I don't run the servers. Eroyalties by the second? I used to reload my account page for hours after posting reviews; I'd watch the counter increase and my account amount grow. It was very therapeutic yet very addicting. I also imagine it was hell on the server and thus probably the main reason it was done away with. In retrospect who needs to know this information on a live basis. I can wait 24 hours. Maybe now I can forge off carpal tunnel for a few more years. Overall? Overall the changes to Epinions as a whole are minor. Nothing was done too drastically and nothing was done that in time I can't adjust to. It took me a while but I've accepted version 2.0 and I'm back in the saddle writing reviews. Writing five in the last two days. They say the first step to quitting something is admitting that you have a problem. Like I'm going to admit I have a problem.

Read all comments (4)|Write your own comment

Write an essay on this topic.