Compare and contrast
If you have bought a product from one of the major UK electrical retailers, there's a good chance you will have heard of Reevoo. In a nutshell it sources, collates and publishes end-user reviews from people who have already bought a product. It does this for its own website, and for clients such as Dixons and Tesco.
We must admit that when the opportunity arose for us to interview Kyle McGinn, the CTO of Reevoo, we hesitated somewhat. The reason was that we were trying to work out whether Reevoo competes directly with sites that review products such as our own. In the end we decided there's only one way to find out: ask them.
You judge for yourself, but in our interview McGinn - who reads HEXUS himself - said he thinks our respective offerings reside at very different stages of the product lifecycle. HEXUS aspires to publish a review at the earliest possible juncture, while Reevoo reviews start to accumulate well after the product hits the market. And, of course, Reevoo reviews are not written by professionals.
We quizzed McGinn on other issues, such as: Data protection, impartiality and who, if not HEXUS, they do compete with. We also cover some of the challenges faced by all web-based operations, such as how best to exploit opportunities presented by social networking and mobile commerce.