Comments on: CrowdStorm Revamps, Seeks Wisdom Of Your Crowd

By: Tim Hoang

Tim Hoang — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:02:41 +0000

In reply to Austin W’s reply about aggregators – the point with them is that they save you from searching. It’s conveniance than anything else. Whilst i think it’s a fair point that you could just log on to specialist sites with experts to give you an opinion – this is just the opinion of one person. sites like the crowdstorm one should theoretically give you the opinion of many people – perhaps linking you to reviews from like – minded souls. Personally, I’d listen to a mate who understood my needs and had a similar budget much more than i would an expert who gets the product for free and has different needs.

By: Philip Wilkinson

Philip Wilkinson — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:13:16 +0000

Also, when you’re thinking of more mainstream users – most of them don’t have a clue which niche review sites exist anyway and just want one quick place to find quality verdicts from experts and users. Combine that with our “ask the crowd” feature and we can tailor responses for more personal questions such as “which digital camera would you recommend for underwater use?”.

You could argue that at one end a small % of online shoppers are savvy and technical enough to get involved on sites like dpreview and invest in the forums (small, small %), and that the other end has the large % of online shoppers just typing things into google and getting various non-specific results. Crowdstorm sits right in the middle.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 10:03:01 +0000

“Is the aggregation of reviews really that much more helpful than searching for them?”

Review aggregation can be useful. Aggregating data from only the better review sites, giving percentage of good vs bad reviews, summarizing the reviews and other stuff – all can add a little extra value.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 02:47:36 +0000

Wasn’t a big fan of the initial site, but you’ve convinced me to take a second glance.

By: Antony Mayfield

Antony Mayfield — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:30:24 +0000

I wouldn’t necessarily think of shopping as niche… as an interest or a topic…

By: Austin W.

Austin W. — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:18:29 +0000

I’m always suspect of sites like this that tackle “niches” like shopping. Looking at the example PNG, not sure how this site would help me buy a digital camera better than a digital camera specific site such as dpreview.com, or help me with home theatre better than avsforum. And if I want to know what people are buying, I can look at amazon’s bestsellers. What’s the need being serviced here? Is the aggregation of reviews really that much more helpful than searching for them?

By: Crowdstorm on Techcrunch.com | Crowdstorm (blog)

Crowdstorm on Techcrunch.com | Crowdstorm (blog) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:54:56 +0000

[...] Finally we can come out and start talking openly about what we’re doing and Techcrunch is the first to have posted about the new site, and you can see it here in all it’s [...]

By: Ciaron

Ciaron — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:40:00 +0000

I’ve been lucky enough to have a peek at the new version – it looks great, really innovative. Some challenge to cope with taking different types of review data/content from different sources and presenting it in a usable, compelling format. Looking forward to the finished version

By: Nicholas Macias

Nicholas Macias — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:55:44 +0000

Respectfully -- a proposed compromise, Nick et al? Link the company name to Crunchbase, followed by a link to the domain in parenthesis, e.g. CrowdStorm (crowdstorm.com) It would have the result you want, and the user experience everyone else wants.

By: Deals and Coupons

Deals and Coupons — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:14:42 +0000

Very interesting ideas…something I could use for my deals and coupons site.

By: Textbook Case

Textbook Case — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:12:58 +0000

Sounds interesting, if a little hectic-sounding name. Agoraphobics beware.