http://www.buzzillions.com/sporting-goods-reviews

http://www.buzzillions.com/cycling-reviews

Cheers, Buzz Team

Like most late night infomercials, you get the feeling that life is a pain.  What are the actors in The Snuggie commercial tired of?  Blankets. Blankets that slip off, trap your hands, don’t work and otherwise FAIL. Enter The Snuggie, a wearable blanket.  Yes, you may look like a Franciscan monk, but at least you can answer the phone while wearing it.

We have over 20 reviews of The Snuggie.  While the commercials touts its snuggly, warm quality, many reviewers write of the products thin fabric and poor quality.  It doesn’t wash well and smells funny.  Some people didn’t seem to mind and loved its functionality anyway, it’s likely some pub crawlers are among those positive reviewers.

There was a time when buying an as-seen-on-tv product was a complete gamble.  Though the commercials are compelling, there was no real way to tell if a product was a good buy.  Retailers didn’t stock it, so you couldn’t even see it in person before purchasing.  Increasingly, people share their opinions and read reviews, knowing that they no longer have to buy blindly.  Now if we could get more of those bar hoppers here to write a review or two we might find out just how well it holds up after a long night of drinking.

While the cult status is comical, there are surely people who fully intent to wear it at home, and not as a joke to the local pub crawl.  Where do you find out if two Snuggie blankets are worth $24.99?  Where do you find out if the infomercial promises are to be believed? Not surprisingly, right here at Buzzillions.

Happy Shopping, The Buzzillions Team

Thanks and spread the word!

Cheers, The Buzzillions Team

In the beginning, the concept was simple…Create THE product review destination so people could buy the right product confidently. The founding team of this company had created the review system for the Sporting Goods retailer Fogdog.com. In fact, I even got to speak to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos about it (albeit briefly enough that I know he doesn’t remember). He sat on our couch in the engineering dept and it was a ratty green couch so I liked him right away. That was it for our “friendship” but our common destiny was cemented. 

Now that we’ve passed Epinions in comprehensiveness and relevance, we’re setting our sites on how to provide THE single best website to the customer who just needs to get in the know before he or she buys. I’ve included some early screenshots to document our journey  (too bad the wayback machine is basically useless in the CSS era). Enjoy!

Original Concept (2006 – before the name Buzzillions):

Buzzillions concept (2006)

Private Beta site (Jan-Mar 2007 – website name still not chosen):

Buzzillions Private Beta (Jan-Mar 2007)

 Buzzillions Launch (April, 10th 2007):

Buzzillions Launch (April 10th, 2007)

Buzzillions 1st Birthday (April, 10th 2008):

Buzzillions.com today (April 10th, 2009):

Buzzillions today (April 10th, 2009)

A big day for us today (Oct 30, 2008)! In the last 6 months, we’ve done a ton of work getting feedback about Buzzillions.com. We’ve conducted usability tests where we observed people use the site in a lab setting. We’ve talked to scores of users about their experiences on the site and the challenges of online shopping in general… all in an effort to make the best website for “finding exactly the right product for you” (our mission).

From brainstorm sessions to design powwows to engineering all-nighters, the whole company came together to launch a site that helps consumers buy the right product the first time (especially in this economy).

But enough about us. None of this matters if it doesn’t make shopping research easier…especially when it comes to buying gifts. So, please take a spin on the site and come back and let us know if it does by posting a comment below.

You might also want to check out a review of the new Buzzillions in the Wall Street Journal today, titled Finding the Right Product Review for You. (the Mossberg Solutions column)

Here’s “What’s New”…

• Buzzillions Rank – To know how a product stacks up against the rest, every product on Buzzillions has a “Buzzillions Rank” – a score that incorporates the star rating, number of reviews and credibility of the reviewers. It’s much more reliable than the star rating alone. Top 10 Lists are then created for every category on Buzzillions using these rankings.
• Personal Reviews – Customer reviews are now organized by type of reviewer so shoppers can read reviews from people most like themselves. For instance, if you’re buying a gift for your sister who just had her first baby, you can read reviews for Jogging Baby Strollers just from First Time Parents.
• Personal Recommendations – Shoppers can find product recommendations from people like themselves (or the people they are buying for). (This functionality is significantly enhanced from the previous site.)
• Review Snapshots – We spent the most time on this, creating the best possible “snapshot” of what all the reviewers agree on. This is the big time saver in your research process, allowing you to scan dozens of products before you drill down to read individual reviews. (Some of this content existed before, but the Snapshot is a distinctive new research tool on Buzzillions.)

And lastly, we started from scratch and re-designed the user experience so it’s super easy to use, and it’s clear we are an independent product review site based on content from real people like you.

Thanks for being involved, and I look forward to reading your comments (even from our competitors).

Thanks,

Jim Morris

]]> http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/10/29/notice-something-different-buzzillions-20-launched/feed/ 1 http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/15/how-do-i-know-who-wrote-this-review/ http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/15/how-do-i-know-who-wrote-this-review/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:00:27 +0000 Jimbo http://buzzillionsblog.wordpress.com/?p=5 When we speak with consumers about product reviews, they are likely to say…

“How do I know who wrote this review?”

That’s a good question. Our moderators do see reviews that are obviously by someone with a connection to the product manufacturer or even worse, people who are paid to write reviews.

Our response from Day 1 has been to verify the writer of the review as being an owner of the product. Amazon might ask you to self-verify (check out their “I own this” checkbox) but we take it a step further and go behind the scenes with retailers to flag the users who they KNOW own the product. When product owners write reviews of products they own, we mark them as being Verified Buyers.

On Buzzillions, these reviews are flagged with this badge:

Verified Buyer is all about one thing, credibility. Want to know what REAL product owners think about the:

iPod Touch 16GB

Just read the 55 reviews almost all from Verified Buyers from two of our most trustworthy retailers, B&H Photo and Abt Electronics . We work with these retailers to ENSURE that the reviewer actually owns the product itself. No guessing. No fakes. Real reviewers with the product in their hands.

When researching a product, isn’t it great to know that the review you’re reading was written by a person who owns it? So as you research the next product on your list…be on the lookout for the Verified Buyer badge on Buzzillions.com. They’re everywhere!

P.S. If you’re not satisfied yet, check out the hundreds, yes hundreds of Verified Buyers who’ve reviewed the:

– Pee Pee Teepees


]]> http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/15/how-do-i-know-who-wrote-this-review/feed/ 2 http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/11/what-makes-you-laugh-scream-and-live-longer/ http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/11/what-makes-you-laugh-scream-and-live-longer/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:54:41 +0000 Jimbo http://blogs.buzzillions.com/?p=316 …reviews. Yep. Reviews.

The Washington Post has just highlighted a great study done by our parent company PowerReviews that talks about how users read reviews to feel more confident in the purchase process. Reading reviews also leads to the following conditions:

1. laughing –
2. screaming –
3. living longer –

Don’t get screwed when you’re buying online, consult our 2 million reviews here on Buzzillions.

(props to our whiz moderators for finding such emotionally effusive reviews)

]]> http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/11/what-makes-you-laugh-scream-and-live-longer/feed/ 0 http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/02/who-will-hire-the-zagat-editors-if-this-works/ http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/02/who-will-hire-the-zagat-editors-if-this-works/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:38:20 +0000 Jimbo http://blogs.buzzillions.com/?p=279

Do these stars tell the whole story? Should you buy a product based solely on a star rating?

The answer is No.

The star rating needs backup for sure. Jean, one of our product managers, tells her story about finding the best garlic press. So why talk about stars….well, yesterday I read on TechCrunch that the Pluribo folks have come up with their own solution to this problem. The idea is to “read” all the underlying reviews with software and regurg some interesting phrases and also give a graph of sentiment. It’s an interesting idea and certainly whoever cracks this nut will make the legions of Zagat editors a little nervous. (Zagat is my favorite summarization “engine” as everybody at Buzzillions knows too well).

We have our own solution which is to ask consumers while they are reviewing the product to tag it with Pros, Cons and Best Uses (in addition to writing general comments). See screen shot:



Then we summarize these tags above the fold for an at-a-glance, wisdom of the crowd view of the product. Here, you can quickly grok the salient points summarized from the underlying reviews which definitely coincide with my anecdotal knowledge about the iPod (think screen fragility, simple controls, good for commuting).



Let’s hope for the Zagat editors sake that the Opentable and Pluribo folks don’t hook up anytime soon.

]]> http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/07/02/who-will-hire-the-zagat-editors-if-this-works/feed/ 1 http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/06/25/2-million-product-reviews-and-counting/ http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/06/25/2-million-product-reviews-and-counting/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:49:32 +0000 Jimbo http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2008/06/25/2-million-product-reviews-and-counting/ Welcome to the Buzzillions Blog. Today, we’re celebrating reaching 2 million product reviews . Unlike many websites we got there the old fashioned way, one review at a time. You see we don’t scrape reviews from the internet. We collect, yes collect, the reviews directly from customers through the PowerReviews network of online retailers such as Staples , Toys R Us , and REI . Every day, thousands of customers input reviews into our system and every day, dozens of human moderators pour over those reviews.

In fact, we make sure that the majority of reviews actually come from people who own the product. We call this our Verified Buyer program. Where Amazon focuses on reviewers having a credit card (which we all know you can get way too easily), we focus on our reviewers having the product. Isn’t that more useful?

We also get custom delivery of human moderated reviews from a select set of online retailers including Overstock.com and Petco.com .

If you’re new to Buzzillions, stay tuned to this blog and we’ll get you schooled on all things reviews (as well as some tidbits about our company and how we toil away in our Tech dungeons).

Cheers, Jim

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