Share your RateItAll reviews with your Facebook friends

For a while now, we've offered the ability for new members of RateItAll to sign up using their Facebook login. This allows these new members to pick and choose reviews that they write to share on Facebook with their Facebook friends.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to offer this functionality to existing RateItAll members, because we didn't have the ability to link an older RIA account with a Facebook account.

This is no longer the case.

We've just introduced the ability for anyone to link their RateItAll account to their Facebook account.

Why would you want to do this? Because it lets you easily share reviews with your Facebook friends, giving your reviews more visibility.

The key aspects of the program are as follows:

- it only takes one click to link your RateItAll and Facebook accounts

- you only share the reviews that you want to - each time you write a review, you are given the option of sharing it with your Facebook friends. If you don't want to, you don't have to - I probably only share about one out of ten reviews that I write.

- once you have linked your Facebook and RateItAll accounts, you will be able to login to RateItAll with one click

To link your RateItAll and Facebook accounts, click the Facebook icon on your home page:


Here's what the Facebook prompt looks like after you write a review:



Here's what a shared review looks like on a Facebook news feed:



I really hope that you will try this feature out. One of the fun things about RateItAll is the "instant feedback" aspect of the site. We write things, and people react to our opinions.

This new Facebook feature increases our collective reach to include our Facebook networks. Folks can even "like" and comment on your reviews right on Facebook.

Let me know if you have questions.

New Item Suggestions Cleaned Out

I'm happy to report that due to the efforts of Jose the Super Intern, we are caught up on new item suggestions for the first time...... well, let's just say for the first time in a long time.

Here's a little refresher as to how we handle new item suggestions for lists:

For the RateItAll and Local lists, we respond to them as quickly as we can get to them.

For Weblists, we try and wait seven days to give the list maker a chance to make a go or no go decision on the suggestion. What this means is that if you suggest a new item for a Weblist - even if the Weblist's owner is not active on the site - it will get responded to in about 7-10 days.

And remember - if you suggest a new item for a list (RateItAll, Weblist, or Local) by clicking the link that says "add a new item to this list" one any list page, you get credit for that page in terms of revenue sharing. This is an extremely powerful way to "claim" important pages of the site that also helps us out a lot as well. For example, if there is a hot new cell phone coming out, why not submit a listing? When everybody wants one of these phones next Christmas, you might have some real earning potential.

YouTube to Emulate RateItAll

At a recent conference in Davos, YouTube founder Chad Hurley announced that soon, YouTube would begin allowing contributors of video to share in the advertising revenue associated with their contributions. This sounds a lot like the RateItAll Economy Program, right?

And I think it's great news. Back in August of last year I wrote a long rant on this blog about how I felt that too many sites were exploiting the contributions of their members. Here's an excerpt:

Now big companies and venture capital firms are realizing that people are happy to work for these Web sites for free. Thousands of new "user generated content" sites are launching. Thousands hoping to be the next YouTube, the next MySpace - thousands hoping they can slap together a site, and have volunteers make it worth millions.

It ain't right, and it ain't sustainable. It took me a while to realize that revenue sharing is the only possible direction for RateItAll, but I'm happy to say that we are still one of the only sites on the Web to step up to the plate on this.

I'm thrilled that YouTube has come around, and I hope that others will follow.

I hope that the primary reason to visit RateItAll never becomes money. If that happens, something about our community will have been lost. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do things the right way and reward contributors.

Sharing Revenue on RateItAll

Has anyone checked in on their Google AdSense earnings via the RateItAll Economy program recently? Mine are showing a bump. RateItAll has posted five straight months of growth, and it makes sense that all of us should be seeing more traffic to our lists, listing suggestions, and profile pages.

Here's one glitch that started for me yesterday, however - because I never verified my AdSense account with Google (put in my SS# and address so I can be paid) - they started running Public Service Annoucements on my pages (not ads). I went in yesterday to verify my account, and they asked me for a pin number that they had supposedly mailed me. I never got it, and had to request a new one (which takes 2-4 weeks). I'm trying to get in touch with Google to see why they are showing PSA's now while I wait for the new pin... it doesn't seem fair. I'll keep you posted.

But in the meantime, if you are participating in the RIA Economy program and have not yet verified your Google AdSense account, I recommend that you do so by going to the AdSense site and signing in.