Can product reviews be done in a wiki? And can they be done better than the regular way of each reviewer having his or her own say? One of the entrepreneurs I spoke with at our Boston MeetUp, Omar Ismail, thinks they can. He is a founder of ProductWiki, based in Waterloo, Ontario. The idea behind ProductWiki is to create collaborative product reviews that boil all the judgments about a product into one single review. It avoids revision wars by requiring every reviewer to list both pros and cons, and then every other ProductWiki reader can vote on each pro and each con until a consensus emerges. Here is a review of the Amazon Kindle, even though it just came out (and perhaps this review is based more on media coverage than actual usage, but it is still decent).
Last week, the site turned on three new features which Ismail hopes will allow him to create the ultimate “product graph” (this is like a social graph for products, showing how products are related or connected to one another). Reviewers can now identify competing or related products, and vote on which ones they like better in a head-to-head, A-B fashion. The third feature is a product rank derived from the first two features. For instance, based on 15 votes, the iRex iLiad beats out both the Kindle and the Sony Reader in the e-book category (so far):
I like the ideas of a product graph and product rank. A true product graph, however, would surface surprising connections. I know the iPod and the Zune are related products, but what about the more tangential connections, like the toaster oven with the iPodish design? That is what I’d like to see.
ProductWiki is another bootstrap startup with three employees (Omar, his sister Amanie, and her husband Erik). It was launched in November, 2005, and has about 15,000 product reviews.
Spent a few hours on this site and I fell in love.
Cool!
ProductWiki is by far the best unbiased product review site on the internet. Easy to use and tons of great reviews. Also a great place to go to get gift ideas….particularly if you are looking for something for someone who has a favourite list posted on the site.
kudos…keep up the awesome work!
CC
This is very cool!!! i like this e-books
Isn’t “unbiased reviews” an oxymoron?
Actually, wikipedia does not offer reviews for that very reason: because reviews are by nature personal, therefore biased – to quote them:
“Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable”. Neutrality is achieved by listing only verifiable facts, not by aggregating several points of view.
I run http://www.iterating.com, a wiki-based software guide. We use the wiki approach, but only for our facts; reviews are attributed to their authors.
Very nice idea…
All of them are stupid and primitive!
sheesh
Only a Mac using itard would be impressed!
definitely a cool product!
Wow I can’t believe it ONLY took TechCrunch 2 years to finally wake up and review ProductWiki.com!
I guess congratulations are in order for both TC and PW!
If you actually take the time to check the full workings/offerings of the site, you’ll quickly conclude that not only is it a great website, with a great mission and 3 very talented Engineers, but the system it runs on is also wicked awesome!
Lame application. No wonder it has done little in over 2 years. I would never use this site to evaluate anything.
epinions.com
and
shopwiki.com
do the exact same thing. This site has nothing new, its just more of the same
Congrats Productwiki !
@NicolasV
It is true that you need bias to write a review…bias what forms an opinion. By “unbiased”, I mean not directly influenced by a company or used as a platform for advertising a product. Users create the review based upon their personal opionions and personal bias towards the product they are reviewing.
Shopwiki? Seriously, shopwiki? I don’t even think you can compare the two sites. ProductWiki contains unbiased content in a structured form. Since this information is structured, the data on PW is far more useful. Imagine being able to create a true product graph where not only are you looking at goods that are competitors, but those that play nice with each other. Imagine where you could evaluate (including reading reviews) among 100 different products in minutes because you can filter/sort/etc. based on the content of user reviews. This is a great start, I hope you get there PW, you are well on your way.
By definition, “review” is not unbiased.
??
Don’t see much new here.
Not bad but nothing much new