No time to read reviews, just make a recommendation please
May 26, 2008 //
I was in the kitchen putting together one of the most heart-attack-enabled sandwichs you could imagine, when I started to think about the movies I rented for the long weekend. In true style, my thoughts quickly evolved into work-mode. I started to think about how good they were (or weren’t) and whether I’d use a review Web site to write what I thought about each one.
The answer was obvious. No. I couldn’t be bothered to write a review to say a particular movie was ‘ok’. If it’s ok, I’m not likely to remember it 10 minutes later, let alone spend time on the Web to write my thoughts down. It’s useful to be able to read movie reviews before renting them. But isn’t it better to ask trusted friends for their recommendations - it’s certainly a much quicker route to getting what you want; a decent movie. That’s not to say that travel review Web sites like TripAdvisor aren’t great, because they are. Sites like TripAdvisor work because they’re very niche.
The answer is either a recommendation-based site for each topic of interest, or one Web site which deals only with recommendations for each topic. The latter is the obvious choice as you only want to join one community driven site. The site/product is only as good as the people using it so the more friends you have using it, the better the experience.
Recommend Box will soon be my central source for recommendations because many of my friends also use it. It’s far from perfect, there are many changes to make the site more user friendly and new features to make it more compelling in the forthcoming release. When these come out in release 2 I’ll use it in anger.
If you want to ask people you trust to make recommendations about books, movies, restaurants and the like, join Recommend Box and get your friends to do the same.
When I have time to write a review about review sites, I’ll tell you why I think Crowdstorm has the most potential.
Gerald Wiggins says 
marco goldschmied says 
Sharon Crossley says 
Go on - tell us now… Why does Crowdstorm have the most potential for reviews and shopping recommendations?
BTW: crowdstorm.com is the US version - crowdstorm.co.uk is for us UK peeps.
May 28th, 2008
To be honest, while I have an account, I really don’t use it. Why? I can go to twitter, ask for a recommendation and get it while I’m on the move. More people I know are on twitter so I have them, also my twitter account is aggregated to a feed many others are follow so I get even more of an audience.
I just don’t find it very helpful/useful when I’m running around like a headless chicken looking for suggestions. I suppose one could argue, if I posted to recommend and wasn’t in a hurry then the reply I get would be adequate.
June 3rd, 2008
@Laura well well well. You’ve come a long way since I first mentioned Twitter to you at the Girl Geek Dinner in Dublin
One of the improvements I’d like to see on recommendbox is the ability to stream to Twitter. So, look at recommendbox as a more extensive twitter feed.
@Phil - why don’t you tell us why Crowdstorm is the best?
June 3rd, 2008
I know…. don’t get me started! It is useful, just wish it would get back to working properly then I’ll be happy again!
But you do see my point, why have twitter and other applications, when you can just use one. Think of it like an IM client, many people have MSN, ICQ, Yahoo,Gtalk - more and more are using Skype. You can talk, type and chat, and I’ve equally burnt the ear off my mates to convert them.
So maybe.. if recommend box was an application with twitter, I might use it more, but then again, I wouldn’t like to see twitter go down the road of facebook or bebo with add on applications….
June 3rd, 2008
@Laura - Twitter is the tool used in between other communication channels. Look at Qik and Sesmic for example, they use Twitter as their main communication channel to users.
When I had dinner with Jack, Founder/CEO of Twitter, he explained that his background was in emergency notification systems - that explains it all for me. It’s not about social networks etc. although social networks are building on top of Twitter.
June 3rd, 2008
Emergency is a good idea. Though I think it’s evolved into more, and for some (hint hint) a more useful tool for RSS resource, search type mechanism
June 3rd, 2008