Toutpost (YC S13) Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice

Post by incision » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 12:38 AM UTC

compare wrote: post #10

dictum wrote: post #8

>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/ )

That's exactly what we do. 50,000+ comparison reviews already analyzed, in 600+ categories. Email us for a beta invite.

Post by compare » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 1:05 AM UTC

incision wrote: post #11

compare wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what we do. 50,000+ comparison reviews already analyzed, in 600+ categories. Email us for a beta invite.

How do relationships with the sources referenced work? Is consent given? I can certainly imagine some valuable sources politely declining to be scraped.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 1:59 AM UTC

aelaguiz wrote: post #9

josh2600 wrote: post #4

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 P…

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…

Post by marianne_navada » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 6:28 AM UTC

bobsil1 wrote: post #16

dictum wrote: post #8

>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/ )

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