DISQUS

SearcH EngineS WeB · 2 years ago

This is a good idea; suprised no one has done this before.

It would be interesting to be able do a dynamic search and seperate the products that users and experts disagreed on.

If the site becomes popular, they will certainly have to get an ROI from someplace for their investors.

If they eventually accept advertising, would there be concerns raised?

It appears that becoming a subscription-only service like Consumer Reports may be a less desirable option.

Josh · 2 years ago

Plenty of sites have done this before, just not across as many product areas as Wize. Rotten Tomatoes has been doing it for movies for years. MetaCritic for games/movies/books/music, and GameStat for games.

Also, I'm not sure they're in competition with Shopping.com, since their ratings rely on the user ratings at comparison shopping sites and Shopping.com's affiliate program appears to be one of their main sources of revenue right now.

tovy · 2 years ago

www.viewscore.com was the first to launch this service so i have to say that nothing new here...

johnrob · 2 years ago

One problem I see with product research websites is that most consumers don't want to do much work. If you are going to summarize the 'quality' of a product with a single number, it's hard to convince us why the ranking is better than a cnet. They have a point score as well, it just happens to be man made instead of machine made.
Utimately, consumers want to be told what to buy. So how is this system any better than the human-edited CNET?

Lauren · 2 years ago

Thanks for all your interest and comments. I wanted to share some areas where we are working to differentiate ourselves.

Wize aggregates both expert and user reviews to give consumers a more comprehensive overview of which products are best for their needs. Our feeling is that expert reviews alone are not the best way for people to figure out which products are right for them. While expert reviews are ideal for letting you know how a product compares to others in its category, user reviews are better at letting you know how a product performs over the long term in the real world.

Wize has also diversified the product categories it scores to include not just consumer electronic products but to also help people find the best household items, like vacuums and microwaves. We're aggregating reviews for a wide variety of products -- from baby strollers to outdoor grills -- and are constantly working to add more products and product categories that all types of consumers would find helpful.

It should be an interesting space to watch in the future, as I think consumers are starting to realize that traditional search engines like Google may not be the best (nor the most time-efficient) way to conduct product research. We're extremely pleased to have Mayfield Fund's and Bessemer Venture Partners' support as we move forward and welcome everyone's feedback and suggestions on the site.

Arie · 2 years ago

alatest.com (http://www.alatest.com) is the international market leader in qualitative aggregation and analyses of expert reviews (and user reviews as well), and has recently signed a global partnership with cnet channel (http://www.cnetchannel.com/solutions/partner_ma...)

Sumitra Menon · 2 years ago

Leading Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant Sramana Mitra, evaluates Wize, a leading online product research engine, in terms of Context, Content, Commerce, Community, Vertical Search and Personalization, based on her Web 3.0 framework.
Link:http://sramanamitra.com/2007/04/23/wize-up-on-what-to-buy-part-1/

Amado · 2 years ago

Pretty Interesting.

Amir · 1 year ago

Is viewscore relevant?
Traffic seems low and category breath much smaller the one wize offers.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wize.com+views...

Mike · 1 year ago

There was this site http://www.reviewgist.com on Ycombinator today - they seem to do something similar. They have minimal review content too.