My colleague Richard Wallis yesterday pointed me to a book review site www.revish.com which has been set up by Dan Champion as a serious book review, filtering out lite reviews by imposing a 250 minimum word count on each review. Intrigued, I had a look.
I spent a fair while browsing around the site, but I was more or less immediately struck by how solidly middle-brow the reviews were. As far as I can see, and I've had a good look, this seems to be quite consistent across reviews and reviewers. There were one or two heavyweights with reviews of novels such as Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (reviewer didn't like it; I loved it, but the review was solid) and Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow (reviewer loved it; I'm scared of it, having read Pynchon's The crying of lot 49, nearly losing my sanity in the process). So what I'm saying upfront is that this isn't about me thinking that I'm too good for www.revish.com, although in passing, it's a shame that the reviews aren't really much better than Amazon's.
The really interesting thing is from a marketing perspective. If you decide to target a particular market segment, in this case serious readers, to a Web 2.0 (therefore defined around participation) site, then how to control that effectively. I'm not sure whether the measure of imposing a minimum word count was effective in differentiating www.revish.com from Amazon et al. Some reviewers just fill the space with a summary of plot, rather than engage deeply and critically with the text. You may have a particular niche in mind for a Web 2.0 site, then, but the all-important participants may have different ideas, and ultimately they will determine the natureof the site, the creator of the site merely setting up a shell for their content. If the site really takes off, and the creator wants to advertise, then how to define the audience. This point is a general issue in marketing with the "new media" but I think that participative sites such as www.revish.com raise particular issues.
3 comments:
Thank you for the review Sarah, I think you've successfully pinpointed some of the challenges we face at Revish.
I don't take issue with anything you've said. The reviews on Revish are of variable quality, which was always going to and will always be the case on any site where contributors are given free-rein, and where there is minimal editorial control. I'm not sure I ever portrayed the site as for "serious reviews" though!
As for comparisons with Amazon, the differentiator of quality is out of my hands to a degree, but for me one the key advantages of our reviews is trust. It's often difficult to get a feel for the credibility of Amazon reviews. At least at Revish you have the ability to easily see other reviews by the same reviewer, learn something about them and get an insight into the books they are reading and have read. If you detect similar tastes to your own then a stronger connection is made than through a single review at Amazon. Subscribe to that reviewer's RSS feed and you can be drip-fed their reviews and recommendations.
We're only 3 weeks old, but membership numbers are steadily climbing, and the site's value to the membership and casual visitors will increase as the number of reviews grows. At the moment I'm concentrating on improving the features and experience for the members who are clearly enjoying what the site offers, and are providing me with valuable feedback on the direction they would like to see it taking. Working on the site is a lot of fun and has been a great learning experience for me, and if there are a small body of users who appreciate what it offers then everyone wins.
As Karl Marx once said, "the point is to change it". If I feel that the contributions to a social site could be better, then the onus is on me to join Revish and start contributing good material.
Somehow, people at Talis had the impression that Revish had been set up as a "serious review" site. Not sure how that misunderstanding arose. I've put people right anyway, and the relationship between trust and credibility re. shared book reviews is interesting. Yet another manifestation of intertextuality as well. I think that's why I love Amazon's List-o-Mania so much.
I digress a little. Thanks very much for acknowledging and responding to my comments. I found it very illuminating, as did a number of people at Talis.
Expect this Talis staff member to become a Revish member anytime very soon...
"but the all-important participants may have different ideas, and ultimately they will determine the nature of the site"
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/01/digg-surrenders-to-mob/
Never a truer word spoken.
Post a Comment