Everyone Is a Critic in Cyberspace

Roger Ebert, Martha Stewart, Consumer Reports, Gallup polls and other product experts and professional pundits had better watch their backs. They’ve got a formidable new competitor: word-of-mouth recommendations by amateur critics that are flooding the Internet.

Millions of neophyte critics and self-made pundits on the World Wide Web are suddenly reviewing and rating everything from vacation spots to books, sports stars to toaster ovens. And new dot-com companies--with names like BizRate, Productopia and Epinions--believe they’ve figured out a way to harness these raw opinions and turn them into a big business that can influence the buying habits of millions.

Their Web sites offer evaluations penned by or collated from typical buyers. So hobbyists, college professors, executives and soccer moms now see their everyday experiences unveiled on the Web, and their influence on sales is being felt.

Take the case of M.J. Rose, pen name for the author of the phone-sex novel “Lip Service.” Unable to interest a major publisher, she self-published the book and offered it for sale through Amazon.com. On the strength of rave reviews posted on Amazon by ordinary readers, and similar plaudits posted on other Web sites to which she had sent review copies, the novel began to sell. It soon caught the attention of the Doubleday Direct book club, which picked it up--the first self-published title so selected. Soon after, Pocket Books paid an advance in the high five figures to publish her novel, Rose said.

“I exist because of consumer [reviews] on the Web,” Rose said. Indeed, Pocket Books takes consumer comments so seriously that it published several alongside promotional blurbs on the back of “Lip Service.”

Amazon.com pioneered this trend of online amateur reviews in 1995; it now has 2.5 million amateur reviews posted on books, CDs and toys.

“Set your snooze alarm,” said one Amazon reader-critic of Scott Turow’s latest legal-mystery bestseller, “Personal Injuries,” which was well received by many professional book reviewers. “It actually made plane flights seem longer.”

Such comments are one of the most popular and successful features on Amazon.com, said spokesman Paul Capelli, who added: “We know from our feedback that they are an important way that people decide on what to buy.”

As other dedicated opinion sites sprout up that commercialize the Web’s unique participatory democracy, they may presage fundamental changes in the behavior of buyers and sellers.

Power may shift to consumers who are less influenced by a brand and more savvy about the price and value of a product. “A lot of [merchants] say that they really like the Web because they can talk to their customers,” said Steve Telleen, an analyst with Giga Information Group. “What they ought to worry about is their customers talking to each other.”

And do they ever talk.

Jeff Clow, a business consultant in Trumbull, Conn., has written 49 reviews for Epinions under the handle “Bonies7” on everything from diet books to steakhouses (“Admit it. When you’re traveling and somebody else is footing the bill . . . what you’d really like to have is a big, thick, juicy steak”) to Sao Paulo, Brazil (“200,000 people live in ‘houses’ made of cardboard--It’s enough to make you want to cry”).

He gets e-mail every day from appreciative readers. Clow said that he finds both writing and reading reviews on the Internet addictive.

Clow, who is ranked as Epinions’ most trusted reviewer, said he trusts fellow Epinions reviewers who “make me laugh or make me think.” So far, he trusts 173 of them.

As for his own credibility: “I don’t consider myself to be an expert on much of anything,” Clow said. “I’m an average consumer; maybe that’s why people like my reviews.”

Millions Flock to Web Sites

And for many readers, such forthrightness is paramount.

New York-based Deja.com, which aggregates consumer ratings on everything from pro football players to toaster ovens, boasted about 1.7 million users in October, according to Web researcher Media Metrix. And Epinions, a Mountain View, Calif., start-up that opened in August, drew 331,000 visitors in October seeking commentary, such as Clow’s, on everything from toys to cruises.

Another opinion collector, Los Angeles-based BizRate.com, which compiles consumer ratings of e-commerce Web merchants, logged nearly 2.1 million users in October.

BizRate polls users by attaching a feedback button to the check-out pages of 2,200 cooperating e-commerce merchants. Buyers fill out a survey covering items such as ease of ordering, product selection and customer support.

Users then search BizRate’s online data to find the highest-rated e-commerce merchants for the item they need. To add some credibility to its role as a consumer advocate, BizRate carries no ads, unlike other dedicated consumer-review sites. But like many other opinion Web sites, BizRate does receive a commission from online merchants when consumers click from BizRate to the merchant’s site to buy something. But BizRate then refunds those commissions (up to 25% of the purchase price) to the buyers.

BizRate’s polling methods might not be scientifically pristine. But the company’s approach is sufficiently respected by consumers (10,000 return the survey daily) and merchants that Consumer Reports began last month to publish in print and online BizRate’s 5-star ratings on e-commerce retailers.

And when retailers make changes on their Web pages, BizRate gets instant answers about whether it works or not. “[We] see customer satisfaction rise or drop instantaneously,” said Farhad Mohit, BizRate’s chief executive. “Because it’s direct feedback from customers in real time, it’s a tool for making commerce much more efficient.”

In a recent survey of 5,500 Web consumers conducted by BizRate, 44% said they have consulted opinion sites before making a purchase. BizRate also said 59% of respondents consider consumer-generated reviews more valuable than expert reviews. These findings were mirrored in a separate, recent study by Internet analysts at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. Forrester found that half of those who use Web “community” sites say that consumer comments are important or extremely important in their buying decisions.

Despite their growing popularity, the content of these amateur reviews rarely reflects depth and rigor.

J. Bennett, a freelance Web site designer and psychology student, has written 56 reviews on everything from the rock band Jethro Tull to the Public Broadcasting System. (“I’ve become a ‘French-in-Action’ junkie, a [PBS] program that comes on around 2:30 a.m.,” she writes. “So if you find yourself sitting in front of the TV and there’s ‘nothing on’ check out PBS.”) She’s one of Epinions’ most trusted critics.

A reviewer on Deja.com who goes by the name “The Darkman” applauds the Maytag Neptune washing machine for its quiet operation. “It makes a cool sound. Sort of like a jet engine spooling up,” said Darkman. “We have had one problem in the past year; a circuit board failed, which made the machine unusable. Not good, but it was covered under warranty, so no problem in the long run.”

Fair enough, though one might wonder how loudly and reliably the Neptune runs in comparison to 10 other washers of comparable price.

This explains why some opinion sites couple consumer-generated content with expert reviews. The amateur critics, though, do compensate for shallowness with breadth--offering a virtual cornucopia that professional reviewers neglect, from mortgage brokers to romance Web sites for bisexuals.

Discussion Groups Proliferating

Internet discussion groups erupted in the last decade to cover virtually any topic. Similarly, opinion sites can post offerings almost infinitely because the cost for obtaining content is near zero. (Epinions, unlike other such sites, offers a nominal fee to reviewers based on the number of times a review is read. Clow, among the site’s most popular authors, earned about $300 in October.)

Although most contributions are genuine, if sometimes quirky, the rapid proliferation of off-the-cuff assessments makes for some dubious ratings.

For example, Deja.com gives long-shot candidate Alan Keyes the nod as the top Republican presidential hopeful; Harvard Medical School, widely considered tops in the nation, was ranked 17th.

Implausible results naturally flow from data produced from self-selected participants, according to Bob Tortora, a polling methodologist with the Gallup Organization. “At best what you get is some qualitative data,” he said. “That means you can’t draw any inferences to any other group than the people who filled out the questionnaire.”

Another weakness of these opinion sites is that they can be open targets by vendors who surreptitiously pan competing products, or from people with an ax to grind, and so vote early and often under assumed names in Web-based polls. Amazon.com’s millions of reader-provided reviews are riddled with such manipulations, to the chagrin of authors and publishers.

“The problem with most user-generated content on the Web is that there is no transparency, no context,” concedes Nirav Tolia, Epinions’ co-founder. His company attempts to solve those problems by having reviewers place biographical sketches on the site and having users rate reviews for usefulness and reviewers for trustworthiness.

For example, the second most trusted Epinions reviewer is Brent Celmins, a movie buff who goes by the handle “Scorsesian.” His thoughtfulness and clarity in 87 reviews seems to rival that of many professional critics. Surprisingly, Celmins is a 19-year-old USC film school undergrad.

Online auction leader EBay uses a similar process to track the integrity of buyers and sellers; auction participants rate each other on every transaction and aggregated ratings are posted on the site.

Whether such approaches ultimately will engender the trust enjoyed by, say, Consumer Reports, remains to be seen.

For these new consumer-generated review Web sites there is also the longer-term task of actually turning a profit. At present these businesses generate revenues by selling advertising and research on consumer habits, earning commissions on shoppers who click through to a merchant site, or licensing their services or technologies to other companies, including Web giants America Online, Microsoft Network, and Lycos. Like other Web-based businesses, most are burning money rather than earning it, said Lisa Allen of Forrester. She doubts that many will end up profitable.

Still, even if amateur reviews are relegated to the status of a loss leader as part of more lucrative Web ventures, their growing popularity suggests that technology is shifting the balance of power in our consumer culture, said Giga’s Telleen.

As user-to-user communications reach a critical mass, he added, “we’re going to see our notion of bringing buyers and sellers together turned on its head.”