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Ask HN: Review our (reviews) Startup

3 points by lawrence ↗ HN
http://www.rateitall.com

Hi, I've learned a lot on HN and would love to get some feedback.

We are a six person team out of San Francisco and just launched a new UI today.

Four features in particular we are proud of:

1) News feed format - build out a custom reviews feed by subscribing to keywords, categories, or people

2) Global add button - add anything to our database for instant review by our users ("write a review" link in header)

3) Compatibility quizzes - rate stuff in different categories (movies, beer, music) and get matched with folks that share your tastes

4) Read / Write API - full access to our millions of user opinions (api.rateitall.com)

Thanks,

Lawrence Co-Founder, RateItAll

8 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] thread
villageidiot
Might be a little too clever. So many options in the UI it's a little confusing to figure it out without signing up - which I am reluctant to do until I have figured out how it works.

How will this site make money?

lawrence
Out of curiousity, would Facebook Connect help get you over the sign up hurdle?

There's no email confirmation step, so you could sign up with placeholder info until you get it.

We make money off of advertising and affiliate. Until we raised money in June, we were profitable. Reviews pages do pretty good CPM, and good affiliate conversion.

We also share revenue with our members via the Google AdSense API:

http://code.google.com/apis/adsense/docs/casestudies/rateita...

villageidiot
I would want to know what the Facebook functionality would add to my experience besides the login ease. Signup is not really a major hurdle for me such that I would feel more comfortable with FC in place. In fact I would be less at ease because of my Facebook privacy concerns. My issue is more about the complexity of the site but perhaps its just my prolbem - just wanted to let you know my gut reaction. I visited, looked around, got confused and frustrated and left. It seems like you're trying to accomplish a lot - maybe a tour video would help. Or paring down the features/UI.

Take it with a grain of salt. I'm probably just an idiot.

lawrence
Thanks for the feedback.

It's just so...damn... hard to lose features.

pclark
* no password confirmation box on register form? ballsy! :>

I really like this, I tried to be clever and rate a mac app - but it pulled it out of Techcrunchs Crunchbase. Colour me impressed ;)

Where do you get your data from? Really slick. Even got "Spaced" as a british sit com.

I don't like the "please wait a moment" that seems to appear on every page, whenever I do anything. Especially when I click a rating star when writing a review.

Always make sure the stars of ratings are clickable for users. If they're not logged in let them rate it, and push them to a register form.

"If you don't see your favorite McDonalds menu item, please make sure to add it by clicking on the lightbulb icon. " If you have to tell the user where to click - your UI is wrong :)

How do I add photos? can I tag my photos on flickr with a rateitall tag and it'll be aggregated?

I really don't get the quizes, how are they review related?

How do I setup a news feed? great idea.

lawrence
Thanks pclark.

We pull data from a bunch of different publicly available APIs.

We are getting serious push back on the "please wait a moment" thing :)

Good call on the lightbulb icon wording - that's from the old site, and no longer makes any sense. We've made "add" buttons very prominent now, so no wording should be necessary.

Did you try our "Add Anything" feature? It's via the "write a review" link in the header.

Currently, you can only add photos to pages and lists that you create. We're working on a more open approach to this.

The quizzes are our attempt to make consumer reviews fun - rate ten mexican beers and we'll tell you how "mexican beer" compatible you are with others on the site.

The gear icon on the logged home page allows you to configure a feed.

Thanks again for the feedback.