8/28/06

Lots of Weblist Activity

Wow, people are really getting busy on the Weblist front. At the time of this post, there had been 440 new listings created across 14 new Weblists in the last 24 hours or so.

Jesse222 has set up three lists relating to the board game HeroScape: HeroScape Tiles, HeroScape Teams, and HeroScape Characters. Unfortunately, I haven't played the game, so I can't participate.

RateItAll newcomer Moodeous has set up a list covering some of her favorite aspects of digital photography - the list covers both camers and Web sites.

Just back from an unsuccessful trip trying to spot some UFOs, Ridgewalker has set up a list of hypothetical, tongue in cheek reasons why aliens might want to visit earth.

Imapimp has continued his series of thematic, free style rhymes - this time with an R&B theme.

Indierocker has three new lists up: Batman Villains, Power Pop Classics, and Bands that Should have been One Hit Wonders.

And I'll wrap it up with a snapshot Kamy's well researched, and potentially helpful new list of pet insurance providers:

Pet Insurance Companies - View All
Animal Friends Insurance (AFI)
(0)
Embrace Pet Insurance
(0)
Healthy Pets Pet Insurance
(0)
Pet Assure
(0)
Pet Protect, Inc.
(0)
PetPlan Pet Insurance
(0)
Pets Best Insurance
(0)
Petshealth Care Plan
(0)
QuickCare Pet Insurance
(0)
ShelterCare Pet Insurance
(0)
UnionPlus Pet Insurance
(0)
Veterinary Pet Insurance Co. (VPI)
(0)
VetInsurance
(0)
RateItAll.com - A network for opinionated individuals.

The Development Pipeline

Here's the stuff we're working on right now, in order:

1) Finishing the integration of the commenting feature - adding links to the recent reviews page that let folks comment on a review, adding a display of the number of comments each review has, etc.

2) Tweaking the review interface on the individual listing pages. We're getting rid of the Rate It! pop-up window on this particular page, and replacing it with a review field (similar to the commenting field).

3) Allowing HTML in item descriptions. This is going to enable all sorts of cool things like RateItAll Video, and Hot or Not style photo rating.

4) Allowing HTML in some profile fields. This is going to let people do some limited customizations of their profile pages (think MySpace), adding in "widgets" and "bling" if they so choose. More on this to follow.

Couple o' Press Releases

There have been two RateItAll press releases in the last week or so.

The first one is about the revenue sharing for reviews:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb425832.htm

The second is about the new commenting feature:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb429422.htm

Press releases are not usually the most interesting thing to read, but they do provide an additional glimpse into why RateItAll does the things it does.

8/25/06

More on Comments

So I'm really enjoying this commenting feature. It's nice to be able to react to reviews beyond that which is possible with the helpful / not helpful buttons.

But the obvious weakness of the feature is that there's no way to tell which reviews have comments. There's also no way to react to a review directly from the recent reviews page.

We're working on it.

Here are the two improvements that will be going live shortly:

1) We will display how many comments a given review has on the individual listing page (the page that aggregates the various reviews.)

2) We will provide a link to comment on reviews from the recent reviews page.

Feel free to send in other suggestions as to how we can get the most out of this new feature.

8/23/06

Where are RIA'ers from?

Here are yesterday's stats regarding where RateItAll's visits are coming from.

Top States:

California - 1,845
Texas - 1,471
Unknown - 1,430
New York - 950
Illinois - 757
Florida - 743
Ohio - 588
Georgia - 562
Pennsylvania - 542
New Jersey - 531

Top Countries

Top Countries:

United States - 15,931
Canada - 1,065
UK - 736
Unknown - 399
Australia - 376
India - 125
Germany - 108
France - 87
Netherlands - 86
Philippines - 69

8/21/06

Rebuttals / Replies / Comments

Have you ever seen a review on RateItAll that was just dying for a rebuttal? Or a few words of praise? Or simply a clarification?

Well you can now comment / reply / rebut any review on the site. Just click through to the review page, and fill in the reply field, and you're good to go:



Over the next week or so, we'll be adding a few tweaks that let folks see which reviews have comments associated with them, as well as a page like the Recent Comments page, that lets folks see where the real conversations are going on.

I like this feature a lot, I think. One of the reasons that I enjoy writing on RateItAll is because of the instant feedback you get. This comment feature will go a long way towards strengthening that feedback factor.

(those that are paying VERY close attention will notice that "not helpful" votes are no longer being displayed on the review pages...the only places they are visible are on the recent comments page and on the reviewer comments page )

New Review Browsing Feature

We've added a new feature that lets folks easily browse through the various reviews for a given item.

Stay tuned for a few more tweaks to this new format as we work to get it right.

Apture