What Do You Think? RateItAll Rolls Out Additional Social Features
When we last spent time with RateItAll - roughly 18 months ago - the service had just released a Flash-based widget designed to help extend its reach to blogs. Today, we're checking back in with the company as it rolls out a new look-and-feel, accompanied by a number of new features designed to facilitate recommendations on practically any topic imaginable - while increasing the social aspects of the site for its growing user base.
As any aficionado of the social Web knows, one of the biggest benefits of social networking is the opportunity to access hundreds - if not thousands - of opinions with a couple of keystrokes.
Any number of sites have made a business of focusing on a singular topic - like movies, music, or restaurants - and helping users manage social recommendations within that niche. Some sites, like Yelp, have chosen to cover a broader range of topics, like retail outlets that cover anything from restaurants to shopping. But few have taken social recommendations to the extent of RateItAll, a site that eschews the niche focus in favor of giving its users the option of rating anything and everything.
Now, RateItAll has released a number of new features to increase the social interaction among its users, including a new feed format which allows users to follow streams of reviews based on keywords and compatibility quizzes - similar to the ever-prevalent Facebook quizzes - which allow RateItAll users to meet other users with similar interests. In short, the latest version of RateItAll is designed to help people find their peers - and to share their reviews with people who share similar interests.
Founded in 1999, RateItAll claims to have "one of the largest collections of consumer-generated content in the world." Lately, it has seen growth in its user base and dataset, a 44% increase since midyear 2008. But, even with its breadth of content, RateItAll hasn't seen the exponential growth of some of its younger - and more focused - competition.
Managed by a small team, the site has already managed to deliver a nice set of features and some compelling content areas. Now, all it needs is the increased user base to take advantage of the offerings. It will be interesting to see if these new social features - plus access to a new API which has the potential to deliver more content to the site - spark some of that exponential growth for RateItAll.
To register for the service, share your opinions, and try the new features, visit RateItAll.
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Thanks for the nice write-up Rick.
I think the horizontal versus vertical point that you raise is a big one - it's a core difference between how we see the review space and how some of our competitors do. We think that people don't fit neatly into verticals, and can be inspired to share an opinion by all sorts of different things in their lives - whether it be people, places, or things.
We're pretty proud of our "Write a Review" feature in the site header, that lets anyone add and review anything in the world to our database - a site, a product, a person, a business, a place, a song, etc.
New layout is a definite upgrade. I wish Lawrence & the rest of their team all the best.
Rick - "RateItAll hasn't seen the exponential growth of some of its younger - and more focused - competition." interested to know what sites you're referring to?
@Adam Wexler: I was comparing publicly accessible traffic metrics with sites like Yelp, BooRah, and Get Satisfaction, among others.
Granted, Get Satisfaction may seem strange one for comparison, but that's generally the first place I go to search for customer feedback on Web-based products.
Nice layout and good sign up process on the site. One of the challenges with free form entry for various products/services is the possibility of duplicate entries and problem with consolidation of ratings and reviews.