TECHNOLOGY / MORE ON TECH : Providing Pay for User Reviews of Goods

Epinions.com, the latest Web business based on the opinions of consumers, launches today with a site (https://www.epinions.com) that provides volunteer-supplied reviews of a wide range of consumer goods. In an adaptation of a model pioneered by Amazon.com, which appends consumer-provided reviews to its book descriptions, Epinions.com users can submit reviews of items ranging from computers to cars to sea cruises. Unlike the way it is with Amazon and many other services, Epinions users will be able to rate the comments of reviewers.

“The problem with most of the user-generated content on the Web” is that consumers lack any context to judge reviewers’ credibility, said Nirav Tolia, a founder of Epinions.com, the Mountain-View, Calif.-based start-up company. Epinions.com will try to build trust by allowing shoppers to rate the usefulness of reviews and to see reviewers’ credentials and previous reviews to assess their depth of expertise. Also unlike other similar ventures, Epinions.com offers a financial incentive to reviewers--a payment of 1 to 3 cents each time a review is clicked on.

“If you write on something really popular . . . and generate a million page views, you could earn about $3,000 for that review,” Tolia said. A response of that magnitude would be rare, however, even if the service is widely adopted by Web consumers. But even a modest payment would differentiate the service from Deja.com and similar competitors.