Comments on: Why I don’t like Riffs

By: Marwan

Marwan — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:35:14 +0000

I have just launched a website a couple of days ago called http://www.tagthis.com that gives you suggestions based on what you like and allows you to organize the internet the way you want it to be. It is in early early beta. Also lets bloggers add free tagging functionality to their website.

Thanks

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By: Trilobyte » Blog Archive » The Read/Write Myth

Trilobyte » Blog Archive » The Read/Write Myth — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:23:51 +0000

[...] I believe the Web works the same way. While some say that walled gardens are a thing of the past, without real boundaries a sense of community does not exist. [...]

By: ....

.... — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:02:15 +0000

TechCrunch ? Why I don’t like Riffs…

Michael Arrington wrote TechCrunch ? Why I don’t like Riffs. Certainly, Riff is one of our sample, learning point for the project. And Michael opinion about decentralized is also quite interesting.

Right now, most famous web 2.0 member offered…..

By: Mashable* » Extra! Extra! Squidoo Beta Now Public!

Mashable* » Extra! Extra! Squidoo Beta Now Public! — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:17:43 +0000

[...] From my perspective, though, the big problem with Squidoo is that it appears to be a walled garden. Michael Arrington didn’t like Riffs because it was too closed – from what I’ve seen, it looks like Squidoo has the same problem. Umair Haque calls it leveraging edge compentencies – in simple terms, Squidoo shouldn’t be a closed system where people create and consume content, but instead it should allow content to flow in and out of the system. But I’m glad they don’t get it, because this is exactly what we’re trying to do with Noodly. Stay tuned! [...]

By: Mashable*

Mashable* — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 21:46:02 +0000

Riffs, Noodly and Microformats

Last week there was a lot of talk about Riffs, with Jeff Jarvis and Michael Arrington both suggesting that Riffs is too centralized – clearly, we need a service which aggregates reviews, rather than forcing people to rewrite their content across mul…

By: Weekly Round-up #2 » Web 2.0 Blog

Weekly Round-up #2 » Web 2.0 Blog — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 08:50:17 +0000

[...] Riffs – Web 2.0 newkid on the block: Riffs offers reviews on everything. I was going to do a full post on Riffs, but Michael Arrington says it all better over on TechCrunch. [...]

By: TechCrunch » Companies I’d like to Profile (but don’t exist)

TechCrunch » Companies I’d like to Profile (but don’t exist) — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 06:08:53 +0000

[...] There are millions of passionate reviews of every product and thing you can think of sitting out there in the blogosphere. Don’t try to get people to re-write all this stuff. Leverage tagging, RSS and, eventually, microformats to aggregate it and make it searchable/findable. Wonderfully, chaotically decentralized. Ad supported. [...]

By: cori

cori — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:14:13 +0000

Tom/Michael;

I’m curious – what if Riffs collected reviews from blogs by offering a trackback url and grabbing the content of the post and starting the discussion like that. Do you think that would be less silo-like? And that way the Riffs guys would only be collecting content that had been offered to them in this fashion.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:54:13 +0000

It’s too generic and doesn’t offer value to those outside this Web 2.0 geek scope, but I do think centralizing content (and not in the way hReview is trying to do it) makes a lot of sense.

By: Otis

Otis — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:04:24 +0000

It sounds like Riffs guys need to talk to Tantek about hReview. It’s a bit scary (for Riffs guys) that a search for “riffs AND hreview” results in 0 matches in the Blogosphere:
http://technora...ffs+AND+hreview

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:35:31 +0000

Tom,

That may be the billion dollar question.

But don’t forget how search engines make money, and where they get their “content”. I’m not sure there’s much difference.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:23:47 +0000

“As I say above, if Riffs can grab that initial content from the open web and create discussions around it”

How would you (or anyone else) suggest this could be done? I think bloggers may get annoyed if content is taken from their blogs and people are making money from it.

By: Jeff Rogers

Jeff Rogers — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:09:21 +0000

Riff is based on a successful model – Yahoo Message Boards. Yahoo host their content in a centralized fashion and have lively discussion boards on news stories, stocks and other items.

I believe the centralized content/discussion boards make up for the bulk of their traffic and advertising revenue.

The clear advantage of centralized content is the ability to perform data mining to relate stories to users based on traffic patterns (Yahoo does this).

Just like GoogleBase, I Riff is probably one of the better business models out there. Riff can attract the mainstream opinionated people and can grow healthy with their own centralized content.

There is no value in de-centralizing content unless you are a hobbyist developer.

By: Paul D

Paul D — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 04:54:28 +0000

I tried it out, but I can’t figure out why I’d want to use Riffs. It doesn’t provide anything particularly useful for review writing; I’d be better off just doing it on my own blog (if I had one).

Perhaps a better approach would be for Riffs’ user pages to function more like review blogs. And then they’d need to offer more specific tools that a reviewer or enthusiast would want. Right now, with their raves and rants and wiki, they’re providing various tools hoping someone will find a use for them, rather than figuring out a good use first and making the best tools for that.

By: Andre Liem

Andre Liem — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 04:49:46 +0000

I actually like the interface a lot, and the AJAX is really nice. I agree with the comments about being too broad. If it focussed on specific products/categories and expanded a bit more on the features (with regards to these products) it would probably do better.

By: lawrence coburn

lawrence coburn — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:51:07 +0000

I really like Riffs’ design and concept. I absolutely love their Nav bar. Besides the “conversation” point made above, centralization provides a built in audience – perhaps the single most important incentive in causing regular people to leave a review.

Where Riffs will struggle is in accumulating content. By virtue of their scope (everything), they will be spread exceedingly thin. To fill out this massive skeleton, they will need more than the savvy blogging community writing a review or two – they will need to appeal to the mainstream.

And my initial take is that the precise reason that this site will appeal to the super savvy (tagging, rss, etc), is also the reason that the more mainstream will be left scratching their heads.

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:34:18 +0000

Scott, I agree on the “conversation” point and say as much in the post. But right now Riffs is ignoring all this great review content on the blogosphere, and trying to get people to write their initial reviews on Riffs. It won’t work in my opinion. As I say above, if Riffs can grab that initial content from the open web and create discussions around it, they may have a business. Otherwise not.

By: Scott Moody

Scott Moody — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:11:47 +0000

There are several reasons why a centralized approach can work better. One example is conversation. Let’s say I’m searching for reviews of a new CD. With an edge/aggregator approach, I can see all the different reviews across all blogs and perhaps I’d visit a few of the blogs to check out specifics. But let’s say I want to have a bulletin-board-style conversation with all of the people who have written reviews in their blogs. With a purely edge approach, I have to choose one blog on which to post a comment. Or perhaps I broadcast my comment to all the blogs and check them all the answers continuously. Neither of these solutions will get a core group of people engaged in a single conversation. That’s why bulletin boards are still HUGE and will continue to be huge. Sure they’re centralized, but that’s what makes them truly great. Great discussions arise from a critical mass of passionate people. It is for that reason alone that we won’t witness the death of “destination sites” anytime soon.

That said, Riffs does not do a great job of promoting conversation. I have to expand each review in turn to see if there are any comments, for example. I’m not going to do that for every riff. If they had a simple bulletin board attached to each Riff, I bet they’d get some momentum. But bulletin boards are so Web 1.0

– Scott

By: Zoli Erdos

Zoli Erdos — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:43:07 +0000

Riffs is too much of a hodge-podge for me; I don’t see why I would want politics, humor, arts, technology, travel .. etc all in one place. I prefer review sites with a focus – a’la TechCrunch.

But I think the social voting mechanism is something you may want to consider, if you are deluged by email submissions. Have a complete list somewhere, and those that got the most votes can make it to the reviews.

By: twenty-fifth dimension :: Is Riffs better than the rest of the riff-raff? :: November :: 2005

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:19:14 +0000

[...] This service is fun but is lacking in certain areas in it’s competition with blogs, the current way of getting reviews. TechCrunch explains why. [...]