We announced in January that we would be re-building the Epinions platform and focusing on aligning both Epinions and Shopping.com with our mission of empowering our community to help shoppers with their buying decisions.

In the last three months our team has been working very hard to accomplish these goals . The majority of our work has consisted of working on the product strategy, planning, and building the basics. You will notice that the write a review feature is now present on Shopping.com. We are releasing all new features on Shopping.com because that technology platform is far more stable than Epinions. Additionally, these features are not as robust as what is on Epinions today and would disrupt current activity on the site. Other features that will soon follow are rating & sorting , an improved search engine , and catalog (product) quality improvements. During this time we would like our community to keep in mind that all new features launched on Shopping.com are the foundation on which we will build. What you see now is not the final product, it's just the beginning.

The write a review feature on Shopping.com is a very basic implementation compared to the functionality available on Epinions. Epinions members can login to Shopping.com with their Epinions account. You will see a very basic profile page which only has your member name and join date. Epinions stats and reviews are not migrated over yet. You will only see reviews written on Shopping.com in your profile page. You can change your password, change your email address, and email address preferences on Shopping.com, but the changes made their will not carry over to Epinions.com. Reviews written on Shopping.com will not earn income share and pageviews will not be available. Epinions reviews are still visible on Shopping.com and their pageviews will continue to be used in the Epinions Income Share process. You have the ability to write a review on the same product on Shopping.com as you have on Epinions.com. When your review data is migrated to the system the Epinions review will take precedence and the Shopping.com review will be over written.

Building a new platform for Epinions will take some time. The plan is to have the new platform launched in early 2010. The current Epinions site will continue as is until we are ready to migrate to the new Epinions platform.
In the meantime, our team will continue to engage with you and involve you in upcoming focus groups and feedback sessions. We are looking to implement many new community features and know that your feedback will be very important to us in deciding how each feature should be implemented.

Christal

Thank you Christal!

I know Epinions is an ongoing work in progress. I also appreciate the time and effort the Epi-team takes in making this a better experience for us. Most of all I'm grateful for the increase in communcation.

Julie

You're most welcome! We would like to share as much information as possible with our community and welcome any questions that you might have.

Christal

Having heard of plans at the meet/greet focus group in Burlingame, I'm glad to have an update. Thanks!

As a service to the untold numbers of consumers across the country who have experienced fires and other failures with their GE microwaves, please spread the word that a National Class Action lawsuit was filed on May 19, 2009, against GE for defective and dangerous microwaves. It is about time for GE to be held accountable for ripping off consumers with expensive repairs and costly part replacements, and, for placing families at risk for injuries, death and property damage due to fires and explosions from their microwaves. These problems have been reported by consumers for years to GE and all over the internet, and yet nothing was done until now. Thankfully, someone finally stepped up to the plate to stop the abuse of innocent American consumers by a corporate giant who has forgotten that it was us, the consumers, who made them what they are today. And, it is us, the same American consumers, who can say to GE - NO MORE! GO AWAY! Learn about the class action and more at BringGoodThingsToLife.org

Thank you for the update. I have always just enjoyed Epinions for what it's all about and will continue to do so. I hope everything will run smooth during this process and even if it doesn't, I have great patience lol. Just keep Epinions here and I am happy.

Take care and thanks for all your hard work
DJ

You stated that the best place to but suggestions for the new site is here. I had asked this a few years ago, but never got a response.

When sorting a product that has hundreds of brand/model/options, it is often hard to search by just rating. I find that many items have a single review which if the one rating was 5star, then it is at the top of the list. I would like to see a search feature where you can make it only show ratings with x reviews or more. For example if there are a hundred potential items, I might want to see only if there are 6 reviews or more. Or if there are only 20, I may want to see all reviews.

For example if you are looking for a vacuum, but have no feature preferences like bagless, etc. In that case, I only really want to see the items were several people have weighed in on the item.

I want to write a review for an item I recently purchased but the store (at least on shopping.com) has no reviews yet, and no link to 'review the company'. I think they are big on on of the large auctions sites but new to e-commerce. It's a very favorable review. I bought an art easel from 'PleinAirCo' made out of mahogany and I've decided not to even use it as a painting easel. Its a beautiful piece, a french easel made in Brazil. So the company is too new to review? I dont get it. But I'm new to epinions as well, I just though these guys deserved it. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks all, Lisa

I get more out of these reviews that the current feedback systems on eBay and Amazon. Keep up the good work.

I'm going to guess that wooden easels of this sort are most likely found in Home and Garden under the Home Furnishings Category. So, the CLs in Home and Garden would most likely take care of the Suggest-A-Product. There's no guarantee that the product could be added, however, since I don't see the "Pleine-Air-Co" company listed. But, it's worth a try.

I suggest contacting any of the H&G leads for advice, and their user profiles can be found here:

www.epinions.com/member/community_lists.html/show_~1/display_list_~true/vert_~2522498/year_~1900

Good luck!

Jennifer