Wize Blog

New Wize features

Since our launch in September we've gotten some great feedback from customers suggesting ways to improve our site and user experience. Today, based on user recommendations, we're launching a new set of site functions. Now customers can:

* Sign up for the Wize newsletter.

The Wize newsletter is a great way to keep up-to-date on new products, new product lists (like the Wize 100s), and the Wize blogs.

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* View recently released products.

Wize will now be listing new products as soon as they come out. This will allow our visitors to view, purchase, and follow new products as they settle into our Wize Rank standings. New products won't have a Wize Rank until we collect and aggregate a statistically relevant number of user and expert reviews.

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* Email product pages to a friend.

Many visitors have commented on how useful it would be to share product pages. To answer this call we've added an "email a friend" function to each product page. Visitors can now email products to friends and family -- a great way to exchange gift ideas during the holiday season.

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* Read buying guides.

Just in time for Christmas, Wize has selected some of the best buying guides on the web and made them available to customers on our product category pages. We hope that these guides will help visitors make good purchasing decisions this season. We've found them to be especially useful when shopping outside of one's normal purchasing patterns: choosing a video game console for the teenage nephew, finding the perfect new gas grill for Dad, or learning all you need to know about buying your first digital receiver.

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* Participate in our survey

Our new customer survey is a great way to let us know what we can do to make the Wize experience better.

Everyone at Wize.com is excited about the new site features, and we're interested to hear what our customers think. Please let us know.

Wize Pressroom Updated

Quick update on site progress before the holiday traffic rush -- we've updated the Wize Pressroom. Now members of the press and dedicated Wize customers can easily find the latest Wize press releases, view our recent press coverage, and access our press kit containing screen shots and company logos. More site enhancements are coming soon in support of our goal to provide the best consumer products and consumer product reviews. Meanwhile, have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

Exploring link relationships on the web

Recently, I’ve been using this great little Java tool from Touchgraph.com to help find sites and resources that are similar to each other. Instead of producing results through a keyword search, like a search engine, Touchgraph creates a visual map based on link relationships. For example, here’s what Greenpeace.com looks like:

*Click to enlarge

The labeled nodes are websites. The lines that connect them are referred to as “edges.” The color and shade of an edge reflects the nature and degree of a relationship between two nodes. Be sure to read Touchgraph’s explanation of how to interpret edges and nodes.

Using this tool I can see where people who have an interest in Greenpeace are going to and coming from. This helps me discover related information and content that I couldn’t have found using a traditional keyword search.

We at Wize.com are interested in this issue – helping people find the most relevant content through relationships – and exploring how it might apply to finding products and making recommendations. We’d love to hear what you think.

Paying for press: the next generation of e-marketing?

We’ve been hearing for a while now that traditional media is decentralizing, fracturing, and otherwise falling apart. As a result--that could also be described as the cause--people are turning to new sources and mediums for information that didn’t even exist 18 months ago. This persistent change of the media landscape poses a big problem for the next generation of marketers and advertisers. So it’s with little surprise that e-marketing services like Reviewme.com, Payperpost.com, and Creamaid.com are launching to fill the gap.

Some of these e-marketing companies dictate how positively reviews should be written; others seek to have their clients products mentioned casually in specific contexts. But in the end the aim of this new breed of e-marketers is to influence Internet buzz by paying bloggers and reviewers for coverage of their client’s products and services. Considering the cynical, and sometimes snarky, nature of the blogosphere it’s going to be interesting to see if this form of Internet marketing really takes off.

E-marketing companies understand that key influencers have the ability to spread their message far and wide, but what they seem to fail to realize is the reason that influencers have the reach they do is because of the solid reputations they have earned. Blogging for profit is nothing new, -some bloggers even make a living off their reader's pay-per-clicking- but the way that a person monetizes their blogging matters a great deal. Pay-per-posting is entirely different, because it basically institutionalizes the practice of paying for press coverage. Sites like Payperpost.com counter that as long as compensation is adequately disclosed it’s not misleading to people. Maybe so, but who will continue to visit the blog, read the reviews, or take the advice of person whom they know is getting paid to make a positive plug?

Internet users are smart and observant people, and occupy a space where reputation and credibility are currencies in their own right. Cynics are abundant and quick to point out fraud. So the launch of these e-marketing services, to a certain extent, is good news for product review and referral sites like Wize. For one thing their launch illustrates that product recommendations are significant sources of influence; important enough to try and “goose” in any case. And secondly, if the practice of pay-per-posting, or pay-for-reviewing, takes off there will be an even higher premium placed on objective sources of information. Wize embraces objectivity because we realize that a solid reputation is what brings people back to a site. If pay-per-posting is widely adopted, then sites that maintain objectivity will continue to be valued as sources of objective information.

Credibility and reputation are everything in a world where misrepresentation can be flagged, “undugg,” or sent to the bottom of the social-bookmarking pile. It doesn’t seem likely that people who build their e-successes around solid reputations will let it all go for a $8.00 Heineken beer plug. Any thoughts?

To read some colorful discussion threads on the topic check out Michael Arrington’s recent post on this issue.