361–370 of 476 posts
Google Plus is down. I don't think anyone's noticed yet.
Very funny that me and my coworkers at nearly the same time opened our office doors to look into each others eyes and silently confirm that we were having the same issue. Then we all turned around and went back into our offices to check HN to see if it was just us. Very funny that everyone reading this did something similar. 84 points in 4 minutes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very important principle. For a time, Target used Amazon's website code. Here is what they found. People leave reviews of books that they like. People only bother reviewing microwave machines when they didn't work. This meant that Amazon's code didn't work out as well for Target as it did for Amazon...
The whole online review thing is thoroughly broken. I am not even talking about people leaving bad reviews for things like "the seller didn't ship it on time", etc. I am talking about the fact that most people that leave a review have nothing to compare the product to. For example, try shopping for a wireless router. You'll find lots of people either praising or bashing it but having no basis for comparison. Star rat…
"Star ratings are completely screwed"
"Long written reviews "...are also extremely subjective."
Totally agree. Here is my analysis and resolution: http://bit.ly/LRSdkJ or
If you want to fix this with me drop me a note. I have an idea, a design and a viable business model. :)
Jeff Morsey is doomed with emails !
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very important principle. For a time, Target used Amazon's website code. Here is what they found. People leave reviews of books that they like. People only bother reviewing microwave machines when they didn't work. This meant that Amazon's code didn't work out as well for Target as it did for Amazon...
The whole online review thing is thoroughly broken. I am not even talking about people leaving bad reviews for things like "the seller didn't ship it on time", etc. I am talking about the fact that most people that leave a review have nothing to compare the product to. For example, try shopping for a wireless router. You'll find lots of people either praising or bashing it but having no basis for comparison. Star rat…
Google's stock just took a 3% dip (~$36), since 10 AM (close to gmail downtime). https://www.google.com/search?q=GOOG
FB is down almost 4%, AAPL is down almost 2%, TSLA is down almost 4%, AMZN is down almost 3%, the whole S&P 500 is down ~2%. I'm pretty sure the market doesn't think that an Apps outage threatens all those companies (and the whole S&P 500) to the point that they'd shave whole points off all of their market values.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there offline reviews that are better? Do you trust the information of a salesperson better? I think there are definitely problems with a selection bias of who leaves reviews, but sites like Amazon have implemented a number of features to improve upon them like rating distributions (how many 5, 4, 3 ,2, and 1s), the vine program, reviewer rankings, verified purchases, large volumes etc.
Consumer Reports is actually pretty damn good for most things, especially in terms of reliability ratings. Good reviews is one of the things I'm happy to pay for, since the web doesn't seem to have spawned a good free alternative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very important principle. For a time, Target used Amazon's website code. Here is what they found. People leave reviews of books that they like. People only bother reviewing microwave machines when they didn't work. This meant that Amazon's code didn't work out as well for Target as it did for Amazon...
The whole online review thing is thoroughly broken. I am not even talking about people leaving bad reviews for things like "the seller didn't ship it on time", etc. I am talking about the fact that most people that leave a review have nothing to compare the product to. For example, try shopping for a wireless router. You'll find lots of people either praising or bashing it but having no basis for comparison. Star rat…
Then there's also the issue of reviews with an "agenda" - self-explanatory, no need for me to say more.
One thing that seems to work is to see someone I know using a gadget, to actually see that gadget being used, and talk to that individual briefly about the gadget. The info I get this way seems quite a bit more trustworthy than online reviews. Of course, this could also be an artifact of the way we form opinions.
Another empirical observation: on Amazon, a significant amount of negative reviews is typically an indication of a real issue. But the absence of negative reviews doesn't say much. Positive reviews do not appear to be quite as relevant-information-rich, unless there's an extremely large amount of them.