RateItAll, the consumer rating and review network we likened to a “distributed Yelp for everything” when they scored about $1.4 million in early stage funding a little over a year ago, has added a useful feature to its web service that allows its users to instantly post reviews on any topic to the RateItAll database via e-mail. When announcing the new feature, the startup’s CEO Lawrence Coburn told us to think of it as a ‘Posterous for reviews’, which is as good a comparison one could make.
Here’s how simple it is: without the need to sign up for the service on beforehand, you can send an e-mail to reviews@rateitall.com, putting whatever you’re posting a review of in the subject line and the star rating as the first line of the e-mail body. Then simply write your review under that first line, attach images if you’d like to include some and send away. It will be posted on the RateItAll website (example), automagically be assigned to the correct topic (which will also get its unique e-mail address) and you can always edit it afterwards if need be.
If you’re interested in learning more about the company, check out our earlier review of RateItAll from the beginning of this year, when the startup revamped its website, released an API and showed us that it was getting traction, in part thanks to its policy of sharing advertising revenue with its reviewers.
This appears to still be the case, judging from this Compete graph (Coburn says it actually understates RateItAll’s traffic and growth rate, which we believe to be true).
Smart, but an iphone app would have been biggger and better.
even bigggger…
You guys(tc) selectively choose bad companies to write about. The links on the site does not work. Anyways…..
Checkout http://buyersvote.com
Are they reviewed at all, or will it turn into a spamfest like techcrunch has in the comments section, people wanting others to look at their crappy blogs?
Wow, the first concern I have is the manual adding of the rated element in the subject line. I hope they have a strong plan for reviewing names for “Closeness”.
I think for something like ratings, where the aggregate view is more useful than the individual, freeform entry is a bad idea..
I was wondering the same thing, I wonder how they are going to group items into categories?
Andrea, great question. Currently it’s a combination of automated and human matching (we already have an enormous database of rate-able items). Over time, we hope that this process swings more towards the automated as we get better at matching email subjects to items in our db.
And one clarification – while the entry is freeform, the display will continue to be highly structured.
I really don’t like their site – they send me so much spam…
“King of Rating” Coburn had 3 words for me after i debuted my portfolio at the Plug and Play Tech 08 …….. “that was bad.” To this day i think he liked it.
http://vator.tv...lio-san-jose-ca
No, idiot. I’m pretty sure he meant “that was bad”. I’ve known Lawrence for a long time and he doesn’t mince words.
What he should have said, but he’s too polite, is: “that was crap”.
The Bad ass photo speaks for itself!
Thanks Robin.
One other quick point:
Each item in our database (company, person, place, thing, product, etc.) now has its own RateItAll email address associated with it. For example, TechCrunch’s is: reviews+i865093@rateitall.com
Sending an emailed review to this address will post immediately on the TC page on RateItAll.
This has obvious implications for the ease with which companies can solicit feedback / testimonials from their users.
To see if your company or site is listed on RateItAll, and to secure your own email feedback address, use this tool: rateitall.com/promote
Glad to see companies opening up ways for people to interact with their sites away from closed off APIs and proprietary shims… looks very helpful.
When are they going to start accepting telegrams?
haha. We’ve actually gotten hand written reviews mailed to us before. Not kidding.
Great job Lawrence. This has definitely made the job of myself and WaTunes even better in terms of getting quicker feedback from our customers! Great development, looking forward to seeing more!
Kevin Rivers
CEO, WaTunes.com
Thanks Kevin.
Lawrence congratulations my friend. Great to see a partner of @mediatrust moving the dial!!!
CEO MediaTrust.com
Thanks Peter, right back at you.
Very easy to use.
It would be great if various ratings sites allowed merging of reviews/ratings.
For now, we would have to add them manually?
hey this is a good idea for a iphone app