They say everything comes in threes, and this month, our launches came in threes. Our third and final launch of September is MediaPlayerInfo.com covering MP3 players and media players such as the iPod, Microsoft Zune. MediaPlayerInfo.com features in-depth reviews and comparisons of media players and their performance. Like our other audio related publications, MediaPlayerInfo.com's testing was developed with Listen Inc., a local Boston based audio testing company.
I think media players is a really interesting category. Apple's iPod dominance is huge, upwards of 70% of the market. To me, what's really exciting about our new publication is that in one regard, we will look at the iPods with the independence, ethics and fair treatment that we treat every product - not afraid of criticize it because of it's dominance. On the other side of iPod's dominance, I think MediaPlayerInfo.com is going to help people understand why they don't always want to automatically buy an iPod.
MediaPlayerInfo.com marks our seventh U.S. consumer electronics publication in the United States. We now provide readers with comprehensive, scientific method lab testing based independent reviews in the following categories: Camcorders - CamcorderInfo.com, Digital Cameras - DigitalCameraInfo.com, Cell Phones - WirelessInfo.com, Televisions - TelevisionInfo.com, Media Players - MediaPlayerInfo.com, Printers - PrinterInfo.com and Headphones with HeadphoneInfo.com. It's amazing to think that just a few years ago we were only reviewing camcorders. We're now in all the major consumer electronics categories, providing people with some of the highest quality reviews in each of those verticals.
As excited as we are to be in all the major categories, we're not done yet! Keep watching - we have some exciting things up our sleeves!
It seems like it's launch month at Reviewed.com and today I'm really proud to announce the launch of TelevisionInfo.com, our HDTV review publication covering LCD and Plasma high definition flat screen televisions. According to industry data, flat screen TV sales are up 28% this year. The prices have dropped this year, and combined with the digital transition it's become a catalyst for a lot of people to upgrade their TV set.
We've been working on this publication for a long time. TelevisionInfo.com includes in-depth scientific performance testing of TVs, similar to all Reviewed.com publications. As we've done with other publications, we partnered with a great outside testing company to develop our tests. We worked with DisplayMate, a New Hampshire based nationally recognized television testing and analysis company led by Dr. Raymond Soneira. Ray worked along side Richard Baguley, VP of Editorial Development, and Alfredo Padilla who is the editor-in-chief for the new publication.
The press release is below:
TELEVISIONINFO.COM LAUNCHES WITH COMPREHENSIVE SCIENTIFIC LAB REVIEWS OF HIGH DEFINTION LCD AND PLASMA TELEVISIONS
(Boston, MA) September 9, 2008 – Reviewed.com today launched TelevisionInfo.com, a comprehensive high definition television review publication featuring in-depth reviews with scientific method testing of television performance and features. The new publication aims to help consumers as the transition to high definition and digital television heats up into the Holiday and Super Bowl buying season. TelevisionInfo.com is the latest in Reviewed.com’s family of ethical and unbiased independent tech review publications.
“We’re really excited to be entering television reviews with such a strong and high quality publication to help consumers,” said Robin Liss, President & CEO of Reviewed.com “The price of flat-screen HDTVs keeps dropping and sales are dramatically up this year. There is a lot of confusing technology out there as well as misinformation. We believe TelevisionInfo.com will bring clarity to this big, confusing market for the average consumer.”
TelevisionInfo.com, along with every Reviewed.com publication follows Reviewed.com’s philosophy of unbiased reviewing done under the highest ethical standards. Reviewed.com follows strict separation between advertising and editorial as well as refusing all gifts and press junkets from the companies they cover. In addition, all televisions tested by TelevisionInfo.com are tested under the same standardized comprehensive point system that uses scientific testing to reduce human bias and error. This allows users to cross compare any reviews, while ensuring that each product gets a fair treatment.
To develop their comprehensive scientific method lab tests, TelevisionInfo.com partnered with the worldwide leader in television and video diagnostics, DisplayMate Technologies. "TelevisionInfo.com has taken on the ambitious task of performing in-depth lab testing using advanced instrumentation together with scientific data collection and analysis to objectively test and evaluate the performance of HDTVs, and then making that information easily understandable to everyday consumers. Together we developed an extensive set of tests and data analysis methods for their reviews that examine the critical aspects of television performance. The reviews on TelevisionInfo.com are among the most comprehensive, scientifically objective, and technically accurate reviews available on the internet and will be a big help to consumers, both in picking the best HDTV to buy or improving the picture quality of one they already own," said Dr. Raymond Soneira, PhD, President & CEO of DisplayMate Technologies.
TelevisionInfo.com’s scientific testing uses cutting edge instruments and methods to produce performance analysis that illustrate each TVs individual performance strengths and weaknesses. These tests include instrument based analysis for color accuracy, brightness, contrast ratio, viewing angle and other performance attributes. These tests are combined with analysis of the TV’s ease of use, aesthetic, remote control and other features to produce a comprehensive review.
TelevisionInfo.com is the seventh niche consumer electronics review publication in the Reviewed.com family. Earlier this year Reviewed.com launched CamcorderInfo.jp, their first international publication and HeadphoneInfo.com, featuring headphone and earphone reviews. Reviewed.com has been reviewing products for 12 years, going back to the company’s first publication, CamcorderInfo.com. Reviewed.com editors have been featured on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News as well as in the New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. Other reviewed.com publications include DigitalCameraInfo.com, WirelessInfo.com and PrinterInfo.com. Reviewed.com is based in Somerville, MA and New York, NY.
I'm happy and excited to announce that yesterday, Reviewed.com launched our first international publication, CamcorderInfo.jp!
We first thought about brining our brand of in-depth reviews to other countries and languages a few years ago. David Kender, editor-in-chief of CamcorderInfo.com, and I traveled to Japan in December last year, and it really got us thinking seriously about whether or not an international version of CamcorderInfo.com or any of our other publications would be viable. After researching the market and talking to consumers in Japan, we felt strongly that people in Japan want scientific unbiased analysis of camcorders and other gadgets.
The project has been an amazing learning experience and lots of fun. We've had many people help us on the project, from editing, template design, and understanding the Japanese market. We're launching just in time for the undokai camcorder sales season, when Japanese parents buy camcorders for back to school sports activities.
Everyone is really excited for CamcorderInfo.jp. Hopefully it's the first of many international editions of CamcorderInfo.com and other Reviewed.com publications.
I visited the Newseum while in D.C. yesterday and it was a really wonderful experience. We initially cringed at the $20 admission fee. Although it might not be out of line for pay museums, in D.C. where every Smithsonian is free, it felt quite expense. They also didn't offer a student discount which I didn't like, as I was with a PhD student and an MD student who would have very much appreciated a little money off. I worry that a lot of people won't even walk in the door becuase of the high admission cost. It turns out, after spending five hours there, we thought it was completely worth it - but there certainly was some sticker shock.
The museum was wonderful. It gave me that warm feeling inside, appealing to my belief in a strong independent and free media that is protected from outside bias. The sections about journalists in war, the critical role free speech has played in America and the heroic depiction of journalists fighting for freedom and truth were reminders of how media companies and journalists serve the greater public good. As a publisher and CEO of a media company, it made me proud that we are staying true to the centuries old practices of ethics in journalism fighting for truth and accuracy. Even if the stakes might be a little lower in reviewing gadgets vs. covering a war, it's still critical that we hold true to our duty as journalists to present accurate and unbiased information.
The exhibits were masterfully done, and as a big museum connoisseur I felt they didn't overuse technology as many places do. They used multimedia technology to supplement artifacts and simple information displays at the right time and in the right amount. My one complaint was their coverage of media scandals. I understand that the want to elevate the industry and profession, however, what's so remarkable to me about the ethics of journalism is it's obsession with objectively covering topics, including itself. I feel that as a institution documenting journalism, they have a duty to objectively cover their topic as any journalist would. They only dedicated one panel tucked away to Stephnen Glass, Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke and Jack Kelley. In my opinion, they should have had an entire hall on the topic of unethical journalism and inaccurate reporting, discussing public trust and mistrust of the media.
We actually only got through the first two and a half floors, so I'll need to return probably a second and third time to see the rest. All around, it's a great museum and I think it's certainly worth the $20.
At NAB I was having a conversation with someone who I'd worked with a few years back when I was editor-in-chief of CamorderInfo.com. I told them now that I'm CEO of Reviewed.com I don't involve myself directly with editorial. They asked what I spend my time doing. My answer was that my biggest task is creating a scalable reviewing operation. This will be a short post, because I think many of the things that we're implementing to create a scalable review operation are trade secrets. However, I do think it's important to highlight how this is the major area of my focus.
To this point, I think we've been one of the most successful niche independent technology review sites in regards to scaling beyond our original property. We now have five publications that have grown out of CamcorderInfo.com, and if you read all of them you will see the broad standards that make a publication a Reviewed.com publication. However, we have a lot more work to do and a lot more improvement. In fact, I believe our greatest challenge as an organization is further refining the Reviewed.com operational model of nice publications and review process to ensure greater success of our future publications.
I think a lot of editorial companies have ultimately failed when they've tried to scale, especially in the review space. They've compromised quality, they've compromised on their core promises to their readers, they've compromised in comprehensiveness, and frankly just aren't producing the best reviews they can. A lot of them have become way to heavy - creating inefficient review operations that are ultimately bad businesses that don't serve their readers. Learning from our past mistakes, and the mistakes of others, to create a great review company that can scale is what I do as CEO.
Today we're launching the fifth member of the Reviewed.com network of niche publications: HeadphoneInfo.com! HeadphoneInfo.com covers all types of headphones, including in-ear, on-ear, over-ear, noise canceling and wireless with comprehensive reviews and in-depth scientific testing. We partnered with Listen Inc., a local Cambridge based company that specializes in audio testing for the development of our testing procedures on the new publication. They'd done such a great job with WirelessInfo.com that we were happy and excited to work with them again on our next audio centric site. At Reviewed.com, we believe that scientific instrument based testing is far superior to subjective human analysis, i.e. "the golden ears" and we're excited to base the performance analysis on HeadphoneInfo.com on what we believe is incredibly reliable scientific testing.
As cities grow and more and more people commute to work using public transportation, it seems the rule, rather than the exception that people listen to music on their way to work through headphones. With commutes getting longer and longer, people might be spending 1-2 hours a day listening to their music through their headphones - becoming a very important piece of technology.
The second commute where headphones seem to play a big role is a much longer one - and that's airline travel. Because of the constant and annoying low frequency noise that planes produce, many people have turned to noise canceling headphones. We worked with Listen, inc to develop a test on HeadphoneInfo.com to measure the noise canceling ability of each set. There are some interesting results comparing active noise canceling headphones to more simple in-ear headphones which just use a tight fit to block noise.
Of course, there is also the long standing audiophile community which we think will find a fresh voice in HeadphoneInfo.com. Our consistent testing and analysis is going to enable any consumer, including beginners and advanced users, to understand the world of headphones and pick the model that is best for them. Importantly, because HeadphoneInfo.com, like all Reviewed.com publications operations under our strict ethical guidelines, readers can trust that the reviews and recommendations are based on the merits of the products alone, and no outside bias.
With more and more people unhappy with the quality of the earphones that come with their media player or MP3 player, the market for higher end accessory headphones is growing aggressively and we're excited to help people make the right choice in the headphone purchase! We hope you like HeadphoneInfo.com!
CamcorderInfo.com is doing a great job this year at getting comprehensive reviews out on all of the important camcorders, and causing a lot of buzz with their reviews. The camcorder industry has gotten very interesting in terms of HD this year, with what appears to be pretty high quality offerings from all the major manufacturers. David and his team have done an excellent job covering each camcorder. With each review they publish, Gizmodo or Engadget seems to post it as breaking news, and the rest of the blogosphere follows. The big reviews include the Panasonic SD9, Canon HF10, JVC HD6 and Sony SR12. It feels like a good epic consumer electronics battle, with a lot of good contenders. Maybe not as big buzz as Wii / XBOX 360 / PS3 - but a big battle nonetheless. As much as the camcorder nerd in me wants to give my opinion on these camcorders, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to, and I think the CamcorderInfo reviews give all the direction you'll need.
What's also really neat is all the interesting comments in the reviews. My favorites are when individual users say 'thanks camcorderinfo.com, now after reading the review I'm going to buy this camcorder' or 'alternatively when they say they aren't going to buy the camcorder'. It's clear the users are spending a lot of time in these reviews and thinking through these expensive $700 - $1,300 purchases. It really makes me happy that our excellent reviews are proving to be so useful to so many people for such a high ticket item purchase!
ClickZ ran an article today about Google's new AdManager product, which we've been working with them on as a beta member for the past few months. They quoted me in their piece: "The biggest positive impact we've seen is increased efficiency," said Robin Liss, president and CEO of Ad Manager test publisher Reviewed.com. "Our salespeople have been eager to input data as soon as insertion orders come in."
After my previous blog post on information economics, I got in touch with Dr. Thomas Weber who is an Assistant Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. He studies information economics and I wanted some further reading on the subject. Dr. Weber pointed me to a great review of literature that I'm reading right now. The title is "The Economic Analysis of Advertising" by Kyle Bagwell from Columbia University, which summarizes the economics literature on advertising's impact on consumer behavior from the 19th century onwards. Advertising is a form of information, albeit a typically biased form. The studies on advertising's impact on behavior can help us also understand the impact of "highly researched accurate information" on consumer behavior, as both are forms of information. The article is long, but it's great and I recommend it to anyone in the information OR marketing industries. It really helps better understand what we do and the impact of information on consumer behavior at a much higher academic / economic / theoretical level.
The first question I'm asking is how do consumers judge the accuracy of advertising and information that is provided to them? Theoretically, the framework used for judging the accuracy of advertising could be the same framework used the judge all information, and thus, judge the accuracy of information and media? This question becomes even more important with the democratization of media, where established media (i.e. newspapers) are fighting much less established media (blogs, online media). If both those media can better understand how people judge accuracy, they might have better success at differentiating themselves, or, in turn, building reputation.
One of the academic subjects I've become really interested in lately is information economics. A lot of it applies to micro negotiating theory, which is something I'm interested in, but not my focus with information economics. What really interests me is information accuracy in markets and how that impacts the decisions of actors on a grand scale; specifically when that information is coming from a free or not so free media.
In a lot of emerging markets around the world traders will talk about how an information inaccuracy discount is baked into trading prices of certain securities. They might now know how accurate the nonperforming loan ratio of a bank is in China, so they account for it in the price - or at least theoretically they do (Rare Look at China’s Banks, New York Times, Nov 2006). A lack of accurate information increases the risk of an investor, so they will account for that in the price they are willing to pay (Information Asymmetry and Asset Prices: Evidence from the China Foreign share discount).
Now most of a trader's market information comes from regulatory filings and governing bodies like the SEC. Information economics would say that increased information and accuracy about companies and economic choices will reduce inefficiencies in prices because all actors can make a more informed choice on what price they're willing to pay. We know that a free media dramatically increases the accuracy of information in a media market because of the reporting they do. A lot of corporate scandals over the years have been revealed by crusading journalists.
On a broad scale, some of the questions I'd wonder about in the realm of information economics are: What happens to an economy, and the prices investors, especially outside investors, are willing to pay for a security if there isn't a free media increasing the accuracy of information they have? Can we create an "economic justification" for the 1st amendment and free speech based on market efficiency and rational choice? Could information economy be a bridge to a freer media in China and Russia and other areas which have become hotbeds of economic activity but have not advanced their free media?
Now, what in the world does this have to do with Reviewed.com? Well, I've been really interested in using information economics to create a purely economic rationalization for our obsession with accuracy, ethics and good journalism. Think about the risk of a product being a poor performer or a bad fit for the consumer buying it - somewhat like the probability of nonperforming loans in a Chinese bank. Most consumers buying gadgets have a very poor framework and toolset for analyzing a product's performance and probability of failure at meeting their needs. This isn't their fault, but using the old TVs setup on a best buy display to analyze a camcorder’s video performance is not an adequate toolset. They don’t have millions of dollars to build advanced labs every time they want to go out and buy a $200 gadget.
What kind of discount do consumers have to factor into a CE purchase because of a lack of information about its quality or how much it will fit their needs or perform well? No one would begin to argue that buyers consciously reduce their purchases by 10% so that they may build up a CE “insurance” to go out and make new purchases to replace their failed ones. Their preset budget has the biggest impact on purchase price.
However, I believe that “product success assuredness,” which I’m defining as any individual consumer’s level of confidence that a purchase they’re making is going to successfully meet their needs has a dramatic impact on the purchase price they are willing to pay. Let’s say you use a certain brand of cooking oil called Brand A. You’ve tried other cheaper brands, but this Brand A has always worked for you – it’s tasted good and made great food. You are willing to pay 10% more for Brand A because your previous success gives you a very high product success assuredness for Brand A. You trust it.
Where this becomes a problem is when products are constantly changing and evolving and deeply complicated. While manufacturers and their brand managers would like consumers to think that because they bought a good Brand X product four years ago, Brand X’s product in a totally different category four years later will be just as good – the reality is that one has little impact on the other.
Product success assuredness can not be built very strongly on past purchases in the technology space. Globalization means that factories are constantly changing. The components used to make a TV one year could come from a plant 5000 miles away the next. Further, because technology rapidly changes, who was once the leader in quality now may be a distant follower.
Consumers know this and have embraced online research from expert driven sources in making their technology purchases. Upwards of 70% of all CE purchases are researched online because consumers know that the devices are so complicated they need outside assistance, and can’t just rely on brand for making their choices. I wrote about this in June in the blog post (The Rise of the Informed Consumer from Niche Publications in the Information Age).
Going back to the discount that consumers apply, if consumers can deeply trust the media and information sources they are relying on to make their purchases, it’s going to increase their product success assuredness dramatically. If a consumer gets their camcorder recommendations from a salesman at Best Buy, they are not going to have as high of a level of product successes assuredness than they will if they get those recommendations from an unbiased accurate media source.
If consumers have a higher product success assuredness they will spend more on the products they buy. If I’m buying a camera, and I hear from an accurate, independent media source that upgrading to a higher level model will dramatically increase the quality of my pictures; I’m going to be more likely to spend more money and buy that higher level product – even if I hadn’t budgeted for it originally.
In other words, take two consumers. Consumer A shops for gadgets to limited success. He doesn’t know much about technology, doesn’t have any good media sources he trusts for his technology purchases and generally approaches each purchase with fear. Consumer A has been burned a few times with purchases a salesman told him to make that turned out really bad. The result is that when Consumer A goes to buy a piece of technology, he spends less money because he isn’t excited about the success of his purchase. On top of that, he doesn’t automatically buy technology based solutions to productivity problems in his life because he isn’t sure they will work out. He has very low product success assuredness.
Consumer B on the other hand has had a lot of success with his gadget purchases. Every time he makes a purchase he reads multiple online media sources that use labs to test each product. He reads message boards and participates in discussions about the products. He reads many more negative reviews than positive ones, which helps him find exactly the right product. When he finds that product, he’s much more confident that he’ll like it because he read all the other negative reviews. When he has an productivity issue in his life, he thinks about how technology might be able to fix that issue because he’s had so much success in the past with his past technology purchases. He has very high product success assuredness.
This product success assuredness in consumer electronics purchases is the way that consumers discount their technology purchases the same as traders of bank securities in China discount the price they’re willing to pay for securities because of inaccurate information from a biased, less-independent and inaccurate media source. When purchasers of consumer electronics are given accurate, unbiased information that they can trust from a free and independent media, their product success assuredness goes up dramatically and that is accounted for in the price they are willing to pay. This is why it is not only in consumer’s interest to have a deeply independent and accurate media covering and reviewing consumer electronics, it’s also in the manufacturers interests because when they make quality products that are worth spending money on, it helps them sell those products!
An interesting side note to this: our data says that our readers spend much more on their cameras / camcorders / cell phones than the general population. Part of this is selection bias; that people reading our sites are more interested in these products so they’ll naturally spend more. However, I would argue, that part of the reason they’re spending more is because they are reading our authoritative reviews, and that is increasing their product success assuredness.
Since I'm doing a very poor job of regularly updating this blog, I figured I'd do a general post updating everyone on how things are going at Reviewed.com.
New Projects - Now that the team is back from the intense and condensed conference season (much like the presidential primaries) we're starting work on some new projects at the Somerville office. I can't disclose what we're working on, but it's a few new sites that are going to fill out our coverage in the consumer electronics space. Once we've launched this group we'll be almost at full coverage of the consumer electronics space. I'll give a hint on one of the categories: If you've ever talked on the cell phone with me (it's obviously not cell phones) you've likely had to hear this gadget as I'm known to rely on it heavily. Our strategy, instead of trying to lightly cover all 15-20 of the important CE categories, has been to move product category by product category, developing intense coverage of each one, only moving on to another category once we've built the best site in a specific niche.
The down side is that means right now we only cover 4 major product categories while our competitors cover 20 or even 40. However, the upside is that it's a much richer experience for our readers, with much more comprehensive reviews and in-depth analysis. For our advertisers, it means that for the niche's Reviewed.com is in, we deliver the most focused, most buyer-centric best audiences of any review site.
PMA - PMA was about a week ago and it was a fun show. Covering shows has gotten much easier as manufacturer PR departments have realized that the online niche review sites are among the most important. I believe DigitalCameraInfo.com had all the news for PMA before the show for every manufacturer. The upside for us is it allows us to focus our show coverage on deeper pieces, instead of scrambling to cover a new announcement that we had no warning of. We published two videos. One, the PMA hair band, and another was a neat little piece once again combining two conferences that happened to be going on at the same time.
Visitors from Japan - I think 2007 was a year where manufacturers really began to realize how important niche online media is. In the camcorder space, I know of a few instances where positive or negative reviews on CamcorderInfo.com dramatically changed the sales volume for specific models in the U.S. I think the manufacturers in the U.S., as well as their corporate parents in Japan really saw this. The increased attention is certainly a good thing for Reviewed.com and all our niche sites.
Over the past few months we've had visitors from many companies to the test labs in Somerville. We've had to develop a policy on what we will show and what we won't show these visitors who have always included engineers who are deeply involved in the process of actually designing the products we're reviewing. On the one hand, our ethics and journalism policies advocate openness and transparency in the way we review. We always publish test results and deeply explain every score we give. On the other hand, we have a fear that if companies understand the review process too much, they will start designing products just so they can get good scores and what the impact that will have?
If you accept that our review process is the most standardized and well laid out in the industry; that it is so clearly articulated and based on math that you can literally begin to calculate how adding or taking off a feature will change a score, item by item; than we have to ask the question are we comfortable with manufacturers to design products for our rubric and reviews? In many off the record conversations I've had, many companies have said they added a specific feature because they knew it would help them score better. I'm not uncomfortable with them designing products with the review rubric in mind, because I do believe that our review rubrics are the best method for analyzing a products quality. If a product is designed with the rubric in mind it will turn out to be a much better product!
Less Travel for Me - The past two months we're quite insane for me and my travel schedule. While they certainly helped in my million-miller quest on my airline of choice, it was very taxing being away from home for almost 60 days straight. Now that the conferences are over, and we're in "site building" mode, I'm really happy to be settled into Cambridge / Somerville / NYC for a while.
Brand Touch Points - One of my big projects for 2008 is mapping out all the interactions that our customers (both our editorial customers, the readers, and our paying customers, the advertisers) have with the Reviewed.com brand. From pulling up http://www.reviewed.com, to visiting one of the niche sites, to reading our reviews on the WashingtonPost.com, to calling the office phone or getting an email from one of the staff, I want to ensure that every interaction our customers have with Reviewed.com is a positive one that helps build an image that is true to our corporate ethos. Maybe we'll play the Reviewed.com Rap about "dropping the scientific bomb" as our on hold music...
Information Economy - I started to write a post here on this subject but it became so long I'm going to post it right after this one.
I'm really not doing a very good job of updating this blog, but, things have been very busy at the company and I haven't had the time. We have our noses down and are working very hard. I'm in Tokyo right now, trying to recover from two weeks of travel that followed a path of: New York - Las Vegas - New York - Palo Alto - Boston - New York - Tokyo. I'm going to go to Akihabara later today - the gadget geek's paradise. As I read someone post on Gizmodo, it's not so much about the newest tech (other than cell phones and some robots, you can get most of what's here in the states) as it is about the crazy niche tech. There's tons of stores in Akihabara that sell the oddest and funniest gadgets in the world. I'm certainly going to take a trip to Yodobashi Camera Store, which is an amazing imaging store, though I think B&H might be giving it a run for it's money with their new second level. I'm going to take a lot of pictures and try to upload them if I have time. We're in Tokyo for meetings with manufacturers, but those don't start until next week.
It's 9 PM, just as I'm finally able to move again after eating massive amounts of turkey, it's time for the next important holiday to start: Black Friday. Black Friday is always fun for us at Reviewed.com because it's the kick off to the holiday shopping season, when all our hard work over the past year becomes even more important for the many people buying tech products as gifts. We've got a lot of special features around the network for Black Friday and the Holiday Season, here are some of the highlights:
CamcorderInfo.com CamInfo Selects - Best Camcorders of 2007 Black Friday Camcorder Deals
What's so exciting about all of our holiday coverage is you can see how our reviewers can deeply compare all of the years products. It's because of our review standardization methods. All of our reviews are so deeply comparison based and it makes shopping and picking the right product so much easier.
I'm pleased to be announcing Reviewed.com's first syndication partnership today with the Washington Post Company. Reviewed.com is providing WashingtonPost.com with our shorter reviews in their technology section which are based on the same in-depth lab testing and analysis that we do on our long comprehensive reviews, but are a quicker read. We've been publishing these reviews on EasyCamcorders.com and EasyDigitalCameras.com for many years and now they have transitioned over to Reviewed.com along with similar reviews on digital cameras, cell phones and printers. You can read the press release here.
We're really honored to be working with such a prestigious and quality news organization that has a deep history of some of the best journalism in the world. At Reviewed.com, standards of ethical journalism and unbiased reviewing are the core guiding principles of our organization. When I started talking to the people at Washington Post the fact that we had such strict ethics policies and standards of unbiased reviewing that were in sync with theirs was the driving principle behind the deal.
In every review we're providing links to our in-depth reviews on the niche sites. If you're reading a review of a digital SLR, you'll have a quick link to DigitalCameraInfo.com's review of that Digital SLR. We've also simplified the rubric on WashingtonPost.com and on Reviewed.com to just a simple numeric ranking of the products. It's important to note that the ranking is the same as you'd see on the niche site, it just uses 1,2,3... instead of an infinite score point system. We did this because we felt everyone didn't have to or want to see the complex math and "algorithm" that we use to rank products. It's like the rankings you see on a Google search result page. There is some heavy number crunching going on in the background, but all you see are ranked products. I think for casual users it's much easier to use.
Anyone who knows me personally or professionally knows my passion for the news business, and the newspaper business in particular. In fact, I think my interest in journalism was started when I read All the President's Men around age 11. After visiting them in DC multiple times, what was even more amazing to me about the Washington Post, was the humility, professionalism and kindness of the people in the organization. The staff at the Post that I worked with lets the quality of the information they publish stand for itself. I think that's an organizational strength of Reviewed.com's as well.
It's a very exciting day for Reviewed.com, and this is hopefully the first of many big announcements you will see in the coming year!
I'm just settling in from a great three day weekend vacation and was browsing over the corporate site realizing it's been over a month since I updated the blog. Good thing our editorial teams publish with much greater frequency than this blog or else we'd be in trouble. Right now we're deep in Q3 reviewing and Q4 prep and working on some big projects so I don't have any big things to write about, however I can give a good general update.
Big Launch Coming - Right now we're deep in a beta of a new site which we should be launching very shortly. We're trying to change the way we launch here at Reviewed.com, especially big software roll-outs. We've developed a good software version and testing phase system which we're using for the first time with this upcoming launch. The site that is about to launch is very "software" intensive, so we've been going through an Alpha, and now Beta stage with the site. The beta is currently private so I can't share a link.
What I can say is that the new site is going to be a lot different from anything we've published before. We're not going to do a big splash with the launch, rather we're going to put the publication up there and start gathering feedback. With this new site we're trying to approach reviews, reviewing and the product research process from a different perspective than you've typically seen from us. I really think the new site is great. I'm sure there are things about it people will love and things people will hate. The best part is, we're going to continue testing and improving it, so the first version you will see will change and evolve over the coming months and years.
Second Big Launch Coming - Somewhat related to the other launch above is another big launch we're simultaneously working on. This is one is also something new for Reviewed.com which you haven't seen before. I think it's a huge positive step for the company. Again, I can't really disclose much on this one accept to say it will be exciting. Doing two launches at the same time isn't easy, and the development team, (special thanks to Brett and Andy) have been working extra hard the past few weeks.
WirelessInfo.com and PrinterInfo.com Doing Great - Both publications are carving out their own niche's and growing on a healthy steady curve. WirelessInfo.com's blog continues to pump out the hits led by Richard and his team along with reviews that are just amazing in their depth. PrinterInfo.com is showing some nice steady growth and publishing some really nice content. Good work to Tom on that publication. I'm so proud and amazed at what the team was able to accomplish with both of the new publications. 12 months ago no one on our staff had reviewed a printer or a cell phone. Now I can confidently say that we are publishing some of the best reviews and content in the wireless and printer space. I think this last expansion round is a positive sign for our ability to continue to grow into additional niches in the future - even ones that might surprise!
DigitalCameraInfo.com Continues to Grow - DCI is doing great. They are publishing tons of reviews and tons of news. We're getting record traffic each month on DigitalCameraInfo.com and I think it's positioned wonderfully for the holiday shopping season. Alex and his team have for the past month been dealing with a downpour of camera announcements. Last count I heard was 40+ new models. The reality is setting in that the lifecycle of a digital camera is now about 6 months and since it's right before the holiday season all the manufacturers are rushing to get new models out.
CamcorderInfo.com - Nothing huge to report on CCI. However, I do want to say that David is doing a great job leading the site. Now, almost a year after I stepped down as editor-in-chief I think everyone can agree that David has done some amazing things with the publication. The new tests they've added in 2007 are very innovative.
Travel - My travel has really lightened up when compared to last year. It's very nice. I've basically cut down on conferences and tried to group trips a bit more. While I am traveling between New York and Boston quite a bit; I've been able to resist flying west for quite a few months now. While I love Vegas and California, I'm happy to not repeat the week last year when I traveled back and forth between California and the east coast three times in one week. I think I decided to reduce my travel when earlier this year I showed up at National Airport and asked for my ticket to New York. The woman at the counter said she didn't have a reservation for me, the conversation went something like this:
"Are you sure, I'm positive I booked a flight," I said. She searched her system and suggested we look for flights departing from other D.C. Metro airports.
"You're at the wrong airport," she said "you're flying out of Dulles, not National."
"Simple mistake, must happen all the time," I laughed out of embarrassment.
"Oh it does, but the reason I couldn't find your ticket is that you're also not flying to New York, your flying to Boston. Luckily we can change your ticket."
Showing up at the wrong airport, and thinking you're flying in a totally different city than you are was probably a sign that I needed to try to travel less. I got the most basic part of air travel wrong, where I was flying from and where I was flying to. Admittedly, living in two cities can feel nomadic and disconnected at times, but it's a lot better on my internal compass if I try to restrict it to just two cities, instead of living in two cities half the time and in a hotel room the other half.
Multivariate Testing - I'm a stats geek - big geek. It's why online publishing and I do well together. I swear I've quadrupled the page views of this one tiny online Z-Test calculator website. This summer I've gotten really into multivariate testing and ongoing optimization. It's amazing to me how tiny alterations in the presentation of something can have dramatic impacts on the way users interact with it. We've been testing all kinds of things on the websites, but mostly those related to price comparison integration. I've really enjoyed running these tests - it's just tons of fun. The best part is the constant stream of data. Every morning we get a few hundred or thousand test cases in and get to keep refining and tweaking our tests. We've found some really interesting things about the ways users interact with our publications.
Ad Optimization: Showing People More Relevant Ads - We're also learning a lot about what people like and don't like when it comes to advertising on the publications. It's clear Google revolutionized online advertising with contextual targeted text ads. It's also clear now that text ads that are targeted to the text of a page was only the first step in showing users more relevant ads. Look, people don't always love ads. Some can get really annoying. What Google did so well was show people ads that are relevant to what they're looking for. That's just great. If I'm going to have to see ads to "pay" for free content, I'd like to see relevant ads. I don't want to see (too many) mortgage ads when I'm reading a camcorder review. In fact, if I'm reading about a high definition camcorder it'd be great if you can show me ads for high definition camcorders. Using a lot of testing and analysis we're finding novel and innovative ways to show our readers more relevant ads. I know we're not revolutionizing the targeting business, but for a company with a small development staff I think it's pretty impressive some of the things we've found. The result is that we've been increasing CTRs 30-50%. Which is growth on top of already impressive performance statistics. This article in the NYT about Digitas shows the innovation I think that is going to really define success in online display advertising in the coming years.
The Reviewed.com Brand - One of the things that is really exciting me this fall and into 2008 is building the Reviewed.com Brand. Up to this point we weren't very hip on marketing that didn't begin with an S in it. As in, marketing that wasn't SEO or SEM; maybe with the exception of public relations. In fact, we were cared so little about brand that we didn't really have a company name. It was CamcorderInfo.com / DigitalCameraInfo.com for about two and a half years. However, through interactions with some very great people; I've really awoken to the importance of brand building for Reviewed.com. I had a great meeting about a month back with a very esteemed magazine company executive who gave me great advice that we really need to concentrate more on the Reviewed.com brand.
I think we've always known that the trust our users give to us to help them with their buying selections was our most important asset. That the ethics, standards and fair process for reviewing that we've developed was our DNA. I think now though we are realizing that those concepts are our brand and we need to make sure that our readers associate those concepts with our name.
Marketing is not a loved thing in the Reviewed.com offices. I've heard many times from editors that their job is to defend consumers against overly-zealous marketing - and I agree with that mission in part. When we turn that word in on ourselves and look at our own Reviewed.com marketing the reaction can be equally negative. However, I'm realizing that marketing and brand building, when done in an honest fashion, is nothing more than helping consumers associate the concepts and processes that make your business great, with your name. If our branding went out there and said, "We're the electronics magicians who are going to solve all your gadgetry problems!" it'd be wrong, and the exact thing our editors work to fight against. In our case though, I think that what branding for Reviewed.com is about is taking the organizational DNA: ethics, scientific method, unbiased reviewing, fairness; and making sure those concepts are associated with our name in peoples' minds. To me, it's not something I know about, but I've already bought quite a few books on it and I'm ready to learn!
What Else? - Looking through this post, I've realized what I thought was going to be a few lines has turned into a small treatise. Here are some random bits. I've been reading a lot more and gotten really into audio books. I've gotten into the habit of listening to an audio book while I work. I'm perfecting the art of reading the news and RSS feeds or emailing while simultaneously listening to a classic novel. Don't be surprised if I subconsciously start writing about the memories madelines evoke in next email to you.
I've rediscovered Facebook. It's interesting to me how all my social worlds are combining (colliding?) on the social networking service. I found this great Facebook App called Friend Wheel which illustrated the different clusters of people I know.
I'm fascinated by this TV show Admen. It's about advertising executives in the early 60s. The show is interesting and well written. To me, a lot of my job is understanding the people behind ad agencies and marketing. Obviously the TV show is far from an accurate depiction of what agency life is about today. What's interesting about it though is that it's a depiction of what the popular image, or I should say the popular attraction of working in the ad world is for a lot of people. What draws people to an industry and what they end up doing in that industry are often two different things. You can learn a lot more about people, especially young people my age, from their work choices, if you think of them in the context of what the popular, and glamorized image of that job is. It's like an image based self selection bias of people's career choices.
I think that's enough for one post. I'll end by saying that this job is a roller coaster, and I'm loving the ride and learning through every minute of it.
I'm a bit sleepy after getting up so early to go to New Jersey for the Squawk Box - regardless, here is a clip of the interview that aired this morning. Hope I don't look too tired.
Quick update. I'll be going on CNBC's Squawk Box tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 6:45 AM to discuss Reviewed.com. The piece came about because of a really nice profile that Jon Friedman wrote about us in MarketWatch. It's going to be a lot of fun and I think we're very lucky because CNBC doesn't typically cover small companies - they cover, well, very big publicly traded companies. Please tune in if you can.
From what I've read TWiT (This Week in Tech) is the most popular podcast online. Richard, our editor-in-chief at WirelessInfo.com who is sleeping in this morning to recover from quite a weekend is on this week's TWiT talking about the iPhone. He joins Veronica Belmont of CNet, Ryan Block of Engadget, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief TV and of course Leo Laporte. Leo is someone I really admire and has been a great mentor to me in the tech coverage space - he's a great person.
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It seems like it's launch month at Reviewed.com and today I'm really proud to announce the launch of 
I visited the Newseum while in D.C. yesterday and it was a really wonderful experience. We initially cringed at the $20 admission fee. Although it might not be out of line for pay museums, in D.C. where every Smithsonian is free, it felt quite expense. They also didn't offer a student discount which I didn't like, as I was with a PhD student and an MD student who would have very much appreciated a little money off. I worry that a lot of people won't even walk in the door becuase of the high admission cost. It turns out, after spending five hours there, we thought it was completely worth it - but there certainly was some sticker shock.
ClickZ ran an article today about Google's new AdManager product, which we've been working with them on as a beta member for the past few months. They quoted me in 