

Toutpost (YC S13) Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice - garry
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/16/toutpost-wants-to-turn-online-debates-into-shopping-advice/

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dictum
>Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice

When I read the headline, I imagined a service that crawled forums and
discussion boards and used NLP to determine useful shopping advice.

If that happened, all those non-slept nights spent battling people who were
wrong on the Internet would finally pay off.
([http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/))

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bobsil1
Arro does something similar (I'm a founder). Scan a product's barcode, it
analyzes several million reviews and shows better choices:
[http://arroapp.com](http://arroapp.com)

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marianne_navada
Love the idea. I found myself spending an hour at a target aisle rereading the
reviews I compiled for a DSLR.

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bobsil1
Awesome, thanks! That's our exact use case :) Any suggestions, please let me
know, or send via the feedback tab.

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josh2600
I don't know, I see this as potentially cool, but really very spammy.

Think about how trivial something like this is to manipulate, and if we're
talking about the value of consumer electronics going into the hands of our
nations youth; well that doesn't inspire me with confidence. If there's
potential to gain, there will be potential for exploitation (see Cory
Doctorow's excellent piece 'All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites'[0])

I don't think you can monetize uneducated commentary. This would be a lot more
interesting, to me, if the conversations were between experts and the points
were upvoted by the community. I see value in moderated debates with scoring
provided by the community. I don't see value in anyone spouting their opinion
and having upvotes on each side.

It's like reddit but with consumer sentiment at stake.

[0][http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt](http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt)

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aelaguiz
You are absolutely correct. Most review systems which are owned by the
merchants are largely viewed as a mechanism for increasing conversion. We
don't make money by selling things though.

So although attempts to game the system will abound we are expressly and only
incentivized to create a pure community with a genuine dialog. If the users
lose we lose. Given incentive that strong we will have to confront gaming head
on rather than be complicit.

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TYPE_FASTER
I had an idea a few years ago. Instead of getting people to come to a new
site, why not harvest all the data on existing enthusiast sites out there?
They have alllll the info on what model years are good and which to avoid,
etc.

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TYPE_FASTER
Also: [http://www.epinions.com](http://www.epinions.com).

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aelaguiz
Epinions has definitely got it's place but we are going for a community rather
than a paid long-form review destination. We feel like human beings talking
conversationally about the things they love is more accessible and
interesting.

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taddeimania
stackexchange for shopping. pure genius.

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whiddershins
That is so smart. Congrats, I hope it works out. I would personally use that
all the time.

