RateItAll, the consumer rating and review network that dubs itself the “distributed Yelp for everything”, is getting a make-over and a bunch of new social features today, including review feeds and product compatibility quizzes.
RateItAll, initially launched way back in 1999, shut down in 2001 after the dotcom bust, and subsequently relaunched in 2007. It allows users to rate topics that range anywhere from music to travel to food. The site currently boasts 350,000+ members, and both Quantcast and Compete show a nice growth pattern in traffic (the company self-reports 1.3 million visits last month, growth of 44% since June 2008 and a total number of 11.3 million unique visitors overall last year).
The new look and fresh features have been in the works for the past 5 months, and development started after the San Francisco-based company raised an initial round of funding of up to $1.4 million in September last year. You can now create a review stream which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed but for reviews by category / keyword or by personal network. The service also added a social compatibility layer dubbed ‘Quizzes’ which lets you compare your ratings and review with those from your friends or other members of the RateItAll community.
The most welcome additions to the service are the read/write API (the company also features RSS feeds and widgets for social networks and blogs) and the ‘global add’ feature that lets users put up any product, business, brand, person and/or place to the RateItAll database for discussion by its user base.
RateItAll pays reviewers 50% as part of a revenue-sharing program based on Google AdSense.
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Hmmm. I’ll have to check out the API. Thanks for the info
Great,
Hope it will help them to get more popular as this is a great community service.
Wow the look isn’t too bad actually. Being a designer myself, I think this still fits today’s mold and doesn’t jump on too many trendy bandwagons. But then again, I am just judging the home page. Overall, you can see the effort.
Is it just me that thinks the new design looks a little like Mozilla’s past designs?
The logo itself reminded me of Mozilla’s logo.
But it’s an improvement on the ladt one for sure
Quite interesting Post. Social media seams to be creeping into everything. They New Web?
Bobby
Robin, thanks for the thorough write-up and for respecting our timing request.
I think the coolest feature in the redesign is the ability to subscribe to categories and keywords when setting up your reviews news feed. You can try it out upon signup.
Also, anyone can easily add their site / blog / startup / product / self to our database for review by our community. Just click the “write a review” link in the header and the wizard will walk you through the process.
Finally, here’s a Web 2.0 Quiz:
http://www.rateitall.com//q-7-web-20.aspx
The new design in excellent and I think their community will only get larger with their rev share model now that they have an API.
Get job Lawrence!
I like the layout and will have to check out the API.
Good Job Lawrence!
Hmm…
Very Intesting..
I can’t wait to see how third-party developers will integrate RIA reviews (and other features) into their Websites…
This is SO exciting Lawrence! Congrats to you and your hard working team! Felicidades. Que spectacular!
Congrats, guys! Looking forward to the launch party next week in SF! Lots to celebrate.
Lawrence,
This an excellent re-design. Congratulations on everything! Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Online product reviews is a growing trend as more and more people start shopping on the internet. The information age as we know it is over, we are in the recommendation age now… that is why product rating and reviewing sites are going to have a good chance at making it…
Greg
“The site currently boasts 350,000+ members”
“the company self-reports 1.3 million visits last month”
Common guys, according to the traffic you reported, these members are in you dreams only.
Funding: $1.4M — somebody definitely lost money.
and they spam like hell…
Dear …,
Just a quick note to say that … is listed on RateItAll - a leading consumer review site that reached more than 13M consumers in 2008.
You can claim it here for no charge by clicking on the green button:
http://www.rateitall.com/……aspx
Claiming your business gives you editorial control over the page including description, images, and links.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Lawrence Coburn
RateItAll
lawrence@rateitall.com
As featured on ABC News, TechCrunch, PC Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, the HuffPo, and more.
I received a similar e-mail. I’m not so sure I’d call it Spam though. It’s more like direct marketing. If I get the same e-mail more than once, I’ll agree, it’s SPAM. But for now, it was just another e-mail.
It looks like they are a TechCrunch sponsor or there is some friendliness between the two, which is how they found my e-mail address.
I’ve check out the site and read about it a bit, it looks promising. You may call the e-mail SPAM but I’m glad it came to my inbox. I think it could be very useful software and they have a generous revenue sharing philosophy.
Check it out before you become so cynical and critical.