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Toutpost (YC S13) Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- whiddershins 13y agoThat is so smart. Congrats, I hope it works out. I would personally use that all the time.
- josh2600 13y agoI don't know, I see this as potentially cool, but really very spammy. Think about how trivial something like this is to manipulate, and if we're talking about the value of consumer electronics going into the hands of our nations youth; well that doesn't inspire me with confidence. If there's potential to gain, there will be potential for exploitation (see Cory Doctorow's excellent piece 'All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites'[0]) I don't think you can monetize uneducated commentary. This would be a lot more interesting, to me, if the conversations were between experts and the points were upvoted by the community. I see value in moderated debates with scoring provided by the community. I don't see value in anyone spouting their opinion and having upvotes on each side. It's like reddit but with consumer sentiment at stake. [0]http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt
- aelaguiz 13y agoYou are absolutely correct. Most review systems which are owned by the merchants are largely viewed as a mechanism for increasing conversion. We don't make money by selling things though. So although attempts to game the system will abound we are expressly and only incentivized to create a pure community with a genuine dialog. If the users lose we lose. Given incentive that strong we will have to confront gaming head on rather than be complicit.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- TYPE_FASTER 13y agoI had an idea a few years ago. Instead of getting people to come to a new site, why not harvest all the data on existing enthusiast sites out there? They have alllll the info on what model years are good and which to avoid, etc.
- TYPE_FASTER 13y agoAlso: http://www.epinions.com http://www.epinions.com.
- aelaguiz 13y agoEpinions has definitely got it's place but we are going for a community rather than a paid long-form review destination. We feel like human beings talking conversationally about the things they love is more accessible and interesting.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dictum 13y ago>Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice When I read the headline, I imagined a service that crawled forums and discussion boards and used NLP to determine useful shopping advice. If that happened, all those non-slept nights spent battling people who were wrong on the Internet would finally pay off. (http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/)
- compare 13y agoThat's exactly what we do. 50,000+ comparison reviews already analyzed, in 600+ categories. Email us for a beta invite.
- bobsil1 13y agoArro does something similar (I'm a founder). Scan a product's barcode, it analyzes several million reviews and shows better choices: http://arroapp.com http://arroapp.com
- marianne_navada 13y agoLove the idea. I found myself spending an hour at a target aisle rereading the reviews I compiled for a DSLR.
- bobsil1 13y agoAwesome, thanks! That's our exact use case :) Any suggestions, please let me know, or send via the feedback tab.
- taddeimania 13y agostackexchange for shopping. pure genius.