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Griff: Welcome Dan.
Dan: Hey thank you.
Griff: You’re welcome. Can you provide us with an overview of the product?
Dan: Sure, of course, it would be my pleasure. In late ’05 we ventured off to create a platform for eBay members to get together and share their opinions and expertise on their respective areas and Griff, as you know, it doesn’t take too many interactions with the community just to be absolutely humbled by the breadth and depth of knowledge out there.
Griff: That’s true.
Dan: Yeah, so we wanted to create something that would really showcase this knowledge and allow our users to get together in an interactive environment and create a dialogue and help others be informed about the purchasing decisions that they’re making and to assist in the buying experience as well as the selling experience.
Griff: So the content for Reviews and Guides is provided solely by the user community itself.
Dan: That is correct.
Griff: And since its launch which was only back in September, what has made you most excited about the reception that’s been given to Reviews and Guides?
Dan: It’s interesting. We have great jobs here. We get to listen to the community and listen to their needs and put a product like this out there and then really see it take root and come to life. So we, of course, expected some great content to be posted, but immediately we were sort of bowled over by the breadth and the kinds of reviews and guides that have already been written. The quality of the content, just again, showcasing the expertise, the deep knowledge that our buyers and sellers have. We’re just proud of the content and we’ve seen a lot of memorable guides out there. We actually have a lot of laughs and again, some interesting debates internally about some of the content that’s there. Let me give you a couple examples. We saw a review that was, What To Consider When Buying A Rubber Ducky.
Griff: (Laughter).
Dan: And there was another one about Chingora, It’s Not Just Dog Hair, is the title.
Griff: (Laughter).
Dan: It’s giving us a sense for what to look for when buying Chingora dog hair and it’s actually available on the site, which is another interesting thing. So we’ve had a lot of fun with it and it’s pretty clear to us that the community is having fun with it as well.
Griff: Now, how does Reviews and Guides work? Can anyone submit content, and once content is submitted what happens to it?
Dan: Anyone can submit content and once it has been submitted it does go through a process to make sure that it’s acceptable and not offensive. And it’s posted to the site. So once it’s posted to the site we basically put the power into the hands of the people, if you will, and allow the community to come back and participate and vote on the quality of guides. Others can come and basically post their opinions for reviews and vote on, say, for example, the make and model of a digital camera, and they can weigh in and say that they either agree or disagree and help post a score that is reflected by the broader interactions of the community.
Griff: Now, as a review or a guide is rated by the rest of the community what happens to it?
Dan: That does actually impact how it is surfaced. So when a guide is rated by the community, those guides that receive the most favorable ratings from the community are actually surfaced up and those that are voted as not being as favorable or useful, get deprecated or pushed down. So we want to make sure that we’re elevated the best content that’s the most useful.
Griff: And how does the ranking work for that? Is it one member, one vote?
Dan: That’s right. So what also happens is the top reviewers receive badges and icons as well, so we want to make sure that we’re rewarding those that are really adding a lot of good, quality content out there.
Griff: And you can’t, I mean, unless you have 100,000 friends who are willing to vote for you, it’s pretty hard to game this voting system.
Dan: That’s true.
Griff: Now, what are some of the benefits that, specifically a buyer, but maybe a buyer and a seller, what are the benefits of reviews and guides?
Dan: Well, let me actually start on the sell side. There are a couple of great benefits. The first, and the one that I personally like, is it gets people involved. It really allows us again to surface up this good content and expertise. But I’d say that on a softer side of the benefits, it helps sellers in particular establish credibility. This also allows them to convey their knowledge and it also gives them a bit of a voice in a way that they may not actually have at their disposal in their About Me page. So it actually goes a long way towards conveying trust to the community.
Griff: Mm-Hmm.
Dan: And then I’d say on a harder side for sellers this content actually is a great way to drive traffic to stores. We’ve actually had a number of favorable emails come in where sellers have said to us, hey I was actually a little bit shy about this process and it was going to require a bit of an investment and I knew that it was going to take a half hour of my time to sit down and write a good guide, but the links that are available for the authors to drive traffic, they can put eBay links in their guides. So we see traffic being directed into sellers’ stores which, of course, they always enjoy. And we also have listings of the author being delivered in the left hand rail.
Griff: So this is a great incentive for a seller to put up a review or a guide because it helps promote their own listings.
Dan: That’s right, absolutely. So, the other piece about driving traffic here is this content is actually spidered by the search engines and will appear in search results and so it’s a good way for sellers on our site to cast a broader net and help generate traffic to their particular area and, in particular, their listings.
Griff: Without spending any money.
Dan: That’s great, yeah, nobody’s going to argue with that.
Griff: I just love that part of the feature and I’m sure I speak on behalf of many sellers who would also agree that anything that doesn’t cost any money and helps drive traffic to their listings is a good thing.
Dan: Absolutely. And on the buy side, through a number of different efforts on the research front at eBay as well as just conversations we’ve had at eBay Live and reaching out to our community via the message boards, we also know that many of our buyers come and use eBay for a research tool during their purchase pursuits. So if they’re going to buy a digital camera, for example, they may actually go to a number of different stops along the way, and we kept hearing that researching reviews and getting other people’s opinions was a very important part of the purchase consideration process, if you will. And we know that there are various areas to go through this process on the internet and we wanted to bring that onto eBay. So what we felt was there’s no better community to tap into than the knowledge base that we have right here on eBay, so by providing this forum we’re giving our buyers a venue to go conduct this research right here on the eBay site and in the process we allow them to be introduced to products that are related to the reviews and it aids in that sort of serendipitous discovery. So you can hone in on what it is you’re looking for, you can get smart on the decision you’re about to make, and then you can make the decision and find what it is you want to buy right here on site.
Griff: Thanks Dan, thanks for stopping by and telling us about Reviews and Guides. You can find Reviews and Guides on the homepage of eBay in the left hand column. If you’re interested in more you can just click the link and you can submit your own content. We were talking to Dan Burkhart, eBay’s director of Internet Marketing. This segment has been brought to you by GetNabit.com, revolutionizing online auctions. Every so often the need arises for a seller and buyer to mutually cancel a transaction, it’s just part of doing business. Find out how to safeguard yourself so everybody wins, up next on eBay Radio.
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