RateItAll Mailbag

We often get entertaining messages sent to us via the web, or via post. Like the RateItAll user plagued by recurring dreams of an offline RateItAll themed nightclub. Or the preacher furious that their default avatar was a serpent.

Here is a polite, handwritten request from Ohio for some tobacco coupons. If only we could grant these sort of wishes :(

RateItAll Economy - On The Rise

For those of you participating in the RateItAll Economy revenue sharing program, you might want to check your stats. We made a few tweaks, and we are hearing reports of big improvements in earnings.

Messaging Spam

We are having some problems with a spammer using RateItAll's messaging system to send commercial pitches.

A fix will be pushed shortly, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

I guess it's flattering that a spammer would take the time to write a messaging script just for us - we are oddly touched :)

Major Search Enhancements

For the last few days, we have been heads down tweaking our search algorithm. Specifically, we have been focusing on 1) prioritizing exact matches for queries in search results; 2) prioritizing listings with lots of reviews over listings with few reviews in the event of duplicate results; 3) doing a better job of handling characters like -,&,', etc.

I think we've made a lot of progress. Check out this query for Jessica Alba - you will now see many exact matches at the top of the results, with the listing with the most reviews coming first. The movie District 9 was impossible to find previously as well - now it's top ranked.

Please help us hammer on this new search algorithm - search for popular items, your own RateItAll nickname, specific lists, etc, and feel free to send us feedback if you feel the search results are not ideal.

I think we've made a lot of progress.

Quick Hitter - Product Label Feedback

Here's a quick one - a RateItAll member is looking for some feedback for some product label designs. Can you help him?

Reviews via Email - A Case Study

I've heard this a few times from RIA regulars:

"reviews@rateitall.com is great and all, but why do I need it when I can just post my reviews from the site?"

For regular users, this is a valid point. You usually don't need need to use reviews@rateitall.com unless you want to, although it is far and away the easiest way to post photos with your review, or to add new things to the site.

But here's a case study from my own experience of when the reviews@rateitall.com feature was really, really helpful.

I recently came back from a trip to Tokyo. It was a 12 hour flight, with no wifi. So what did I do? I opened up my laptop and drafted some reviews of each of the amazing things I saw on my trip, and attached photos to each one.

When I was back online, those emails went out and posted instantly.

I use RIA almost as a diary of the things (and my reactions to those things) that I come across during my life. Reviews@rateitall.com is a way to document and capture those moments, even without access to the Internet.

This theme of how to log a moment on RIA even during those times when you are not sitting at your desk with an Internet connection is something I find pretty interesting.

For some of my Tokyo reviews, see here, here, here, and here.

Have a Blackberry, Pre, or an iPhone? You can now post reviews on the go.

One other aspect of our reviews@rateitall.com feature that we haven't really mentioned - this is a baby step towards making RateItAll a mobile service.

If you have email on your phone, you can now post reviews just by sending an email to reviews@rateitall.com.

Somebody has already figured this out:

Some Coverage for reviews@rateitall.com

Here are some links to some coverage and more information on our new reviews@rateitall.com feature:

TechCrunch

HyveUp

Press Release

Twitter Stream

reviews@rateitall.com FAQ page

Major Product Announcement

For the last few weeks, there have been whispers around RIA-land of an important new feature - the ability to post reviews, instantly, via email.

We have just released this feature publicly.

There are two ways to post your reviews via email.

1) The easy way. Look for the "email your review" link on any RateItAll item page. It looks like this:


2) The easier way. Email your review to reviews@rateitall.com

Here's how:



That's it. Of course, you can also attach images to your emailed reviews, and the resizing and formatting happens automagically.

Believe it or not, it was very, very hard to make this feature so easy to use.

Please help us out by hammering on this feature a bit. Send feedback to feedback@rateitall.com (it blasts out to the whole team this way).

Testing a Top Secret Feature

We are testing a top secret feature on RIA. If you are an RIA regular and would like to help us test, please message me, Automatt, or Lena.

On Off Topic Reviews

We've been seeing a rash of off topic reviews recently. These are typically very well written and pretty funny joke reviews (or photos) posted on a real product, service, or local business page.

Unfortunately, we need to delete these, per our site rules.

Behind every product, local business, brand, and service provider on the site, there is a real company with real marketing people, and sadly, real lawyers. These people tend to get really pissed off when RateItAll allows our regulars to post jokes on their pages. For these folks, their online brand reputation is no laughing matter.

So if you see your off topic joke reviews of real products, services, brands, and local businesses go up in smoke, this is the reason.

We tend to be much more lenient on the member created lists about whether something is off topic. The beauty of RIA is that you can usually find an acceptable place to post just about anything on your mind.

The five most shared reviews in August

This is the list of review level pages that were most shared to date in July.

Seaborn Barnes
http://www.rateitall.com/r-2950579.aspx

DirecTV
http://www.rateitall.com/r-3849860.aspx

Marlboro Blend 54
http://www.rateitall.com/r-4319890.aspx

Gates / Cambridge
http://www.rateitall.com/r-4382717.aspx

Ol' Roy
http://www.rateitall.com/r-3915517.aspx

Dreams of RateItAll

We get a lot of unusual fanmail to RateItAll. We've gotten hand written reviews of products mailed in from Mississippi. We often get notes asking us to "Tell Oprah" this, or "Please tell President Bush to call me." We've gotten cases of energy drinks from marketers confused about who is doing the reviewing.

This one came in this morning, and I thought it was worth sharing. Apparently, a particular RIA reviewer has RIA on the brain so much that it is infected his / her dreams. Here it is:

I had a really weird dream last night that RIA got so huge that they opened up a really swanky hot spot called "The RIA Lounge" in Los Angeles.

It was basically this huge club. It looked almost like a night-club but it was multi-storied and it served food and was open all day. It almost felt like a casino. The whole point was people and companies would petition RIA to allow them to leave their products lying around inside so that patrons could come in, play with them, and then either go home and rate them or rate them right there in the club on the laptops and computers that other companies left inside for the same purpose: exposure, hype, excitement, etc.

Even chefs (up-and-coming and well-established, alike) would take turns churning out the food so that people could rate that as well. There was a huge stage on the top floor in an area that resembled the Palms club in Vegas, where only the coolest new bands would play -- also to get ratings, etc. People couldn't get enough.

Anyway, I showed up one weekend and RIA put me in charge of explaining to patrons what this one product was. Turns out it's pretty hard to explain. But basically, the product was this software program that put people in various scenes. The way it worked was, there were video cameras and monitors planted throughout the club. As people walked around the club, the video cameras put them on the screens -- but the backdrops wouldn't be RIA's club; instead they would be different scenes from around the world. In one, you might see yourself surrounded by tribespeople in the amazon, walking right in step with you through the jungle. In another you'd be in a sea of British redcoats marching in time down a city street. The way the software worked was pretty cool -- the lighting, etc., was perfect so you wouldn't even stand out from the scene were it not for your clothing. It was bizarre, but that was just one of the many cool gadgets that you could check out at this place. And then you'd go and rate it.

Really bizarre.

Bizarre indeed.

Please keep the fanmail coming.

How come you can't subscribe to a city from the new home page?

We are still digesting feedback on the new home page. Our new registrations were up noticeably yesterday, which I think is a good sign, and which was sort of the whole point - let people play with the site a bit before forcing them to register.

One bit of feedback that we've heard a couple of times:

"How come I can't subscribe to a local directory / city from the new home page?"

The short answer is because we haven't yet hooked up a visitor's geolocation to the site yet. Once we do that, it will be an easy thing to offer each visitor the opportunity to subscribe to reviews of bars, restaurants, and businesses from their home town.

But just because you can't subscribe to your home town from the home page doesn't mean the functionality doesn't exist.

Here's how to add reviews from your home town to your River:

1) Drill down to find your home town's directory on RateItAll - for example, here is the San Francisco directory

2) Click the "Fave" icon - bottom right of this screenshot:


Clicking "Fave" automatically subscribes you to the city's reviews, and if you click your river settings, you can confirm this:



We will continue to look at ways to make it easier to subscribe to the topics you are interested in - not just for non members, but for everyone.

Help us test a new feature?

Hi All, we just pushed something that we think is pretty cool - it's a new home page (for not logged in users), that shows off some of our amazing "river" functionality. Basically, it lets you easily subscribe to the topics that you are interested in, making your river fill up with not just the posts from people you follow, but also from topics you follow (e.g. Politics, Gadgets, Movies).

Here's how you can help us out with testing.

1) Logout
2) Go to the RateItAll home page, and try clicking on various icons (note how the river updates dynamically each time)
3) when you come up with a combination of topics that you are happy with (and note that you can "view more" on topics to select from 21 different ones), click "Save Your Feed" and then login. Your new topics will then be added to your feed.

I love this new home page - I think it's incredibly interactive, and is a nice show of force for our database. BTW, if you like the icons, tell Lena.

Help us choose RateItAll's Next Feature

Last Friday, the RateItAll team departed the hallowed halls of RIA Global HQ and Campus, and got on the Bart train for the Carnelian Room - a magnificent restaurant and meeting facility in downtown San Francisco located on the 52nd floor of one of the city's tallest buildings.

The goal was to get offsite for a day, unplug from the daily grind, and talk about what we wanted to be as a website and as a company.

The venue was stunning - we were literally in the clouds, up above even the Transamerica Building, with views of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Coit Tower.

During the afternoon, we had a session where we went around the table and came up with every idea for "small tweaks" to the site that we felt would make the site better for folks trying to use the site - whether they be writers, readers, businesses, or advertisers.

The session was done in a game format. Each person had 10 seconds to come up with an idea, or be eliminated. The winner got a package of Astronaut Ice Cream (and the loser got a package of Astronaut Ice Cream). Those who came in second, third, and fourth, also got packages of Astronaut Ice Cream.

The output of this meeting of the minds was this list of 82 suggested RateItAll site tweaks. Please rate them based on your opinion of their Priority. 5 = highest priority.

We have a new page!

We've just launched a Review Success Page. You will only hit this page when writing a review from A) the river; B) an item page; or C) the add a new item page. You won't get this when speed rating from a list page.

We built this page because A) we felt that it would be helpful from an editing / proofreading perspective to see the review you just wrote front and center; B) we could better call out the sharing buttons (FB, Twitter, Email); and C) that having a separate page was a good opportunity to highlight other places to hit on the site.

Here's a screenshot of the review success page:

Add RateItAll to Your Site by Copying and Pasting

We just launched a new feature that we hope will make adding RateItAll to other sites as easy as copying and pasting.

We're calling this thing the RateItAll Review Widget.

Here's how it works. On every item page on RateItAll (e.g. iPod (widget), Pixar's Up (widget), Abraham Lincoln (widget), Red Bull (widget)), you will now see a little embed icon that looks like this:



Clicking that icon lets you format a little module (widget) that can be pasted onto your blog or website. Don't be fooled by the small size of the widget - you can post reviews into this thing, and you can also read the reviews of others. You can login via your RateItAll or account, or via your Facebook account. It's like a little mini RateItAll to go.

So what are the implications of this? If you are Randyman and write an awesome blog about boxing, you can include reviews of some of the great fights in history on your blog. Or if politics is your thing, you can include reviews of any US President, or any issue from RateItAll controversial list of political issues.

Anyone who has spent time on RateItAll knows we have something for everyone. There are now more than 2.2M little review widgets for your copying and pasting pleasure. Message me with questions.

Here's a widget for Disputed Iranian Election.



(Note: if you were using the old widget, replace the old code with the new - it's way better)

Are you on Twitter? Follow RIA's accounts

Here are some fun Twitter accounts to follow for RIA addicts:

/AllReviews - this account gives you a real time feed (with links) of everything getting rated on the RIA network



/AllComments - this account gives you a real time feed of all new comments



/AllItems - This account gives you a real time feed of all new items added to RIA (minus LongTail)



/AllQuiz - real time feed of all quizzes taken



/RateItAll - Editorially selected pages from RateItAll

One More Big Fix Live

Since the launch of V3, one of the biggest complaints we've heard from folks who use the site a lot was in regards to the Home / River page.

Here was the problem:

If you paged down a few pages to see recent reviews on the home page, then clicked off on something, and then clicked back on the browser - the page was not remembering that you had paged down. In order to get back to the view you were on, you had to page down again.

This was annoying for a lot of folks.

This is now fixed - please try it out.