The web is teeming with user reviews on everything from movies to VC firms. But with so many detailed opinion pieces available, getting to the bottom line can be difficult.
Today sees the launch of PhrazIt, a site looking to cut through the noise by offering users a tag cloud related to various topics on the web. Rather than employing a traditional star or numeric system to rate a topic, PhrazIt uses brief words or phrases no more than 30 characters long.
Once a user has chosen a topic on the site, they’re presented with around 25 tags that have been entered by other visitors. You can either add your own description, or you can click on one of the existing tags (the most popular tags will grow in size, allowing users to summarize a topic quickly).
One of the biggest drawbacks to PhrazIt is that all tags in the cloud are pulled from submissions from the site itself. Instead of searching through popular review sites like Amazon or Rotten Tomatoes, PhrazIt relies on user-submitted data. This works well enough for popular topics (like Batman, seen below), but it makes searches for less common topics a waste of time.
PhrazIt is the first company to launch from the DreamIt Ventures early stage startup incubator, which is similar to Y Combinator. The incubator is currently working with its first “class” of eleven startups, and will have its first exhibition day in early September.