Uncategorized26 Dec 2005 01:06 am
We were mentioned in the NY Times!
You’ve Opened the Gift. Now Give It a Review.
I sort of wish the reporter had followed up with us to let us know that we were going to be in the article because Andrew and I had some fairly significant UI changes that we were going to be pushing into production next week for both Dontbuyjunk.com and our community product, Turf. Had we known about the article, we would have cranked to get it out last week.
Nevertheless, even though it was just a couple sentences about what Dontbuyjunk offers, it was awesome that we were included in the article and compared to much more well-established competitors. Thanks Kate Murphy!
Tags:Dontbuyjunk
December 26th, 2005 at 2:33 am
…congratulations! this is a great first step in getting publicity for your site.
in particular, it made me curious enough to go to your site and try out the latest features. I soon fell in love the new design where the ten icons immediately differentiated it from your typical price search website (i.e. homepage full of table columns, almost like you’ve just opened your Excel sheet).
Great graphics, who did them?
On the other hand, I also checked out ConsumerSearch.com but was bitterly disappointed with their ad polluted, inhumane user interface. Here’s what I did: I started with a simple quest of finding the best 5 megapixel digital camera , but was soon presented with a lengthy list of miscellenous looking digital cameras, with ads neatly padded around 60%+ of my viewing area.
The only 5 megapixel model it mentioned was the Nikon Coolpix 5900. But to me, having a good knowledge of the digital camera arena, immediately knew it was not right for me. Why? because I prefer a camera with a larger LCD!
Having tried navigating the site helplessly for another few minutes, I finally decided the format of the site is better suited for a particular computer program known as the “parser”, and the term “easy-to-read tables” was definitely misunderstood by the author of the article.
Merry X’mas.
December 30th, 2005 at 12:42 am
Congrats on the mention in the Times, nothing but good things from here on out.
February 14th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Hi folks. I am the CEO of ConsumerSearch.com and actually if you are wondering how you ended up in the New York Times article it is because I told Kate Murphy about you because I am a fan of yours. That’s really because I believe in meta reviews and because in the long history of what became consumersearch.com I played with designs more similar to what you have. We did not use those, but really, I have a great bonding with anyone who would think to do this, so I am a fan of yours and I mentioned you to her. From reading that article, my guess is that she went off on a tangent about what I was telling her about Consumer Guide publishing puff pieces. She must have written a lot about that and then have been cut a lot to fit the publishing space, which is the only reason I could explain the article which was eventually published. My guess was that they even changed the lead to be a post-christmas lead because they waited too long from its being handed in to published. It did not occurr to me to tell you that kate was working on the article because it was a month from when I was interviewed to when it went to press in the paper, and by that time, I figured that it was on the cutting room floor. Regarding our content to ad ratio, we learned that many visitors tend to focus on the meat of the articles and remember that over the ad ratio. So, we have not felt that the credibility of the content could withstand the…. errr…. revenue optimization. I will check on the balance there again when I get a moment of perspective to do so. Often, if somebody is really an expert in a category, they don’t need our site. It is the decisions of the vast majority out there that I am afraid of. In any case, good wishes from an admirer.