Rate Your Credit Card

Let's all pile on the credit card industry when they're down.

We've added a pretty comprehensive database of cards for credit card reviews to our site - find your card(s) and rate it (them)!

One more plug for the RateItAll Toolbar for Firefox

I am loving the RateItAll toolbar for Firefox. I love it so much that I abandoned the new Google browser, Chrome, and came back to Firefox 3 - just so I could use the toolbar.

I use the toolbar to 1) rate sites (and add them to ria) as I browse around the web; 2) directly access my reviews and my network's reviews; and 3) search RIA from anywhere.

If you use Firefox and haven't yet taken the toolbar for a spin, why not try it out? Click here to download it.

Some Changes to Search

For the last several years, we have been using a third party search service to deliver search results on RateItAll.  They did a pretty good job, but there were a couple of problems:

- There was a one day lag in new things showing up in the search results

- Their search engine was a general search engine that had been tweaked to try and meet our needs - it was not build from the ground up specifically for RateItAll.

- The search results were hosted on a third party site, causing a very slight delay 

No longer.

Our newest engineer, Jonathan, has built a site search engine for RateItAll that is better and faster than what we had before:

- There are no more lags.  If you add a new page (weblist, review, item) to the site, it will immediately be reachable via search.

- Search is rocket fast now - no bouncing back results from a third party site

- Search quality is better - because this search engine has been built for RIA, I think you'll find that the results are a bit better.

Please hammer away on the search engine and let me know if you see anything screwy.

Social Media Poem

A guy named Greg K. has written a poem about web 2.0 / social media - pretty clever, no?:

I’M PRETTY WELL CONNECTED

(a Web 2.0 poem)

By

Gregory K.

I’m pretty well connected:

Facebook’s got my face.

I AIM and blog.

Of course I vlog.

Come see me at MySpace.

I Flickr, and I Twitter.

I wiki and Squidoo!

I’m Live. I Ning.

I’m there on Xing.

I’m really LinkedIn, too.

I Hulu, Yelp, and Google.

My YouTube channel’s hot.

I share Goodreads,

Have many feeds,

And Digg and link a lot.

Second Life and Classmates?

Xanga? RateItAll?

I’m on those four

And dozens more

Plus some I can’t recall.

I’m pretty well connected:

My friends are EVERYWHERE.

I bet I’d meet

Them on the street…

If I’d just leave my chair.

RateItAll Toolbar for Firefox

We've just launched a neat Firefox toolbar for RateItAll.  If you are a Firefox user, you can take it for a spin HERE.

Going from left to right on the toolbar, here's what each button does:

Read Reviews Button:

As you browse the web, the Read Reviews button will turn yellow if RateItAll has reviews of the site.  This is helpful if you are, say, thinking about buying something at an ecommerce site that you haven't used before.  If you see the "Read Reviews" button light up, you can check out reviews from other folks that may have used the site before by clicking on the button.  If it doesn't light up, it means that noone has reviewed that site yet.

Search Button and Search Box

The search box and button does exactly what you might think - it lets you search RateItAll's database from anywhere on the Web.  Clicking "search" will pop open a new tab on your browser and display results from RateItAll.

Rate This Site Button

This is my favorite button on the toolbar.  As you browse the web, this button lets you rate and review whatever website that you are on.  Clicking the Rate This Site button pops open a new browser tab, and takes you to the right page on RateItAll to rate the site.

And here's where it gets neat - if RateItAll doesn't already have the site in its database, it directs you to the new item submission page on RateItAll, with our best guess as to the proper information already populated into the page (web site name, web site url, web site description, etc.).   

This tool is for rating domains (e.g. CNN.com), not rating individual articles or pages within a domain (e.g. CNN.com/wall-street-collapse).

My Reviews and Friends' Reviews

The My Reviews and Friends' Reviews buttons do exactly what you might think.  They take you directly to the pages where you can view your own review archive, as well as recent reviews from your network.  On RateItAll.com, you have to click a couple of different links to get to these pages... I find it's really helpful to be able to access them with one click.

Inbox

The Inbox link takes you directly to your RateItAll inbox where you can check messages from other reviewers.

Sign Out / Sign In and Home

Sign Out and Sign In are self explanatory.  Home takes you to RateItAll.com.  And clicking the little drop down takes you to important RateItAll pages like Recent Reviews and Hall of Fame.

Many thanks to RateItAll programmer Alexander for building this cool new toy!

Eventually we will get to building something similar for Internet Explorer.

Google Case Study

Our friends at Google have written a nice case study about how RateItAll uses AdSense for revenue sharing.  Check it out.  My favorite quote comes from some guy named Lawrence Coburn:

“Treating your users fairly is not only the right thing to do – it’s also good for business.”

Date-Able App for Facebook

Aileen, RateItAll's awesome intern, has built an application for Facebook around dating called Date-Able.  There are a bunch of dating related quizzes on there that will help you find (or avoid) that special (or unspecial) someone.

Facebook users can click through to add the Date-Able app.

Oh yeah, if you have ideas for more apps or quizzes, talk to Aileen.

What Browsers Do We Use?

A new browser from Google launched this week called Chrome.  There are already some pretty good Google Chrome reviews on the site.

So it got me thinking.... which browsers does the RIA community prefer?  Well, here's a snapshot of yesterday's activity:

IE is still the big fish here, but I find it impressive that Chrome accounted for 1% of all visits yesterday.

Here is RateItAll's ranking of top browsers:

Check out RateItAll

Working Hard Over Here at Expanding Our Coverage

For a long time, there were very few new rating lists added to the main RateItAll section. The vast majority of the new stuff came in from members in the form of Weblists. This dynamic was mostly the function of RateItAll not having any resources, and partly the function of not having efficient tools to add new listings.

Well, now I have some help over here and some new tools, and some folks have been working very hard at expanding our product coverage. I wrote already about all the new baby product review sections that we've added. More recently we've been focusing on pet product reviews (pet beds, pet carriers, dog health products, etc), health and beauty reviews (hair styling tools, bath scales, fitness shakes), and sporting good reviews (archery products, badminton racquets, baseball bats, etc.). We've also added sections for radar detector reviews, luggage reviews, and Christian books.

Weblists continue to be a crucial part of the site - I think they are largely responsible for giving RIA it's unique "rate anything" flavor and personality. But I also think it's time for the RIA team to start pulling OUR weight in making sure we have coverage for popular product rating categories.

If anyone has ideas / requests for product rating categories that they would like to see covered, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

We've Gone Baby Crazy

A certain member of the RateItAll team - he/she shall go unnamed - has a baby, and has been complaining about the lack of baby rating categories on RateItAll. Waah.

So we've gone a bit baby crazy, adding sections for Crib Reviews, Cradle Swing Reviews, and Baby Gate reviews to the site. We've also considerably beefed up our stroller reviews section.

So if you have a baby, know a baby, or ever were a baby, I'd encourage you to please click through and write some baby product reviews.

A New Logo!

Guys, check it out....

RateItAll is the proud owner of a sleek new logo.

It reminds me of fireworks! Or a sleek rocket ship! Or shooting golden stars through the night sky!

OK, maybe I'm getting carried away... but I REALLY like the logo.

Our old logo was originally designed to be very "business-y" - this one seems a lot friendlier to me.

If you have kind words to say, please send them to Lena.

If you have harsh words to say, please send them to Jose.

And if you want to rate the logo, click HERE.

And we're back....

... two hours ahead of schedule. Thanks to Automatt for his hard work in getting us cut over and all the prep work he did to make this a smooth transition.

If you see anything not working properly, please let me know.

Cutting Over to a New Host - DOWNTIME IMMINENT

Guys, as we continue to deal with site and rating engagement growth, we will be cutting over to a new host today.

Currently our architecture looks like this: one pretty good database server, one very fast web server, one OK web server, one weak web server.

As of later tonight, our architecture will look like this: One very good database server, five very fast web servers.

We expect a noticeable improvement in performance, and of course, the ability to handle several times the amount of traffic that we can today.

We're going to be down for about six hours while we transfer our massive database to the new host.

Videos and Weblists

I love how folks are starting to embed videos into their lists - some of these are really entertaining.

Check out Wiseguy's recent lists on 2008 Campaign Ads and Awkward Political Moments.

Survey

If you get asked if you'd like to participate in a survey while surfing RIA, don't panic. It's legit. We are looking for some specific feedback on a couple aspects of the site.

Images

Guys, we made a pretty significant change as to how we handle images. Specifically, we've moved all of our 5GB worth of images (profile pics, item pics, list pics) over to Amazon's servers. This should fix some of those nagging issues related to changing or deleting a pic. Sometimes this would work, sometimes not. Now it should always work.

Also, the images should load much faster now.

If you see anything screwy with images, please let me know.

RateItAll Bebo App

Guys, we just launched a RateItAll Compatibility app for Bebo. We need your help testing it. You can add the app to your Bebo profile HERE.

As soon as you add the app, make sure to click the "join/login" link so you can sync your Bebo RateItAll account to your main RateItAll account.

It should be getting pretty clear what we're trying to do now - we want you to be able to post, share, and access your reviews from any site - not just RateItAll.com.

Thanks!

A Trusted Network?

Guys, we need your help. What's the best way to describe the folks that you have added to your "trusted network?" We somehow feel that "trusted network" doesn't quite do it. Any ideas?

Here's the list - please send in suggestions.

Improvements to Google AdSense Revenue Sharing Program

Guys, we rolled in some important improvements to our revenue sharing program.

Specifically, we are now sharing revenue 50/50 with program participants on every Google ad block on qualifying pages; Your Profile Page, Your Lists, Items You Contribute to Others' Lists, and your Review Pages.

I expect that this will result in a moderate increase in earnings for participants.

Also, we've made it MUCH easier to link your RateItAll account to an existing Google AdSense account.

To sign up for the Google AdSense revenue sharing program for the first time or to link your RIA account to an existing Google AdSense account, just go to your profile page, click the "Edit Account" link on the left hand side, and check the box that says "Sign Me Up for Google AdSense so I can earn cash."

Then choose whether you'd like to sign up for a new AdSense account, or link an existing AdSense account to your RateItAll account and fill in the fields.

You will get an email from Google confirming your enrollment. Also, you can check the status of your AdSense account (approved or pending) right on your RateItAll account page.

Rating Lists vs Yes/No Polls

One of the things that makes RIA so great is the creativity that folks have shown in using our Weblist tool to build fun and engaging content. We've seen the RIA rating engine used for everything from product rating, to travel diaries, to music rating, to video rating, and even reviewer rating.

But every once in a while, I believe our lists can start to stray from RIA's wheelhouse of rating / opinion related content, into things like general self expression tools, or yes/no polls.

And I don't want to go in that direction. RateItAll is an opinion / rating community. That's what we do, and we're not going to overreach.

An example of what I'm talking about are some of Dyna's recent lists like "Do You Remember" and "Have You Ever." It's been fun seeing folks tell stories about different experiences that they've had. However, these are not rating lists. It's very difficult to rate, on a one to five star basis, "Do Your Remember Your Very First Car."

We're not total hardasses about this - occasionally, a self expression list or two will slide on by. However, as a general rule, we're going to stick to rating stuff. That's our world, and that's what we know. So if you see some of these lists go invisible, that's me just trying to reign things in a bit.