Hi Pete, ever since your post about us (ProductWiki) a few weeks ago, I have to admit that I’ve been a loyal reader of your blog.  I would just like to comment on your assessment that ShopWiki and ProductWiki are essentially “repeats” of each other. ShopWiki and ProductWiki are fundamentally different in how their content is populated. ShopWiki automatically crawls the web for products, and contributors collaborate on buying guides for these products. On the other hand, ProductWiki relies on users to populate the products found on the site, contribute associated content, and organize all of this information in the most useful way.  I think that the “human touch” is required in all aspects of a shopping wiki for it to be successful. Because of the search engine crawling model that ShopWiki employs, I don’t think they will significantly improve the consumer experience over sites like Froogle, Epinions, or Shopzilla.  Either way, we love the competition!  Yep - ProductWiki is user-populated, while ShopWiki is populated by a web crawl. I probably should have been more specific on that one.  FYI- ShopWiki doesn’t have an affiliate program, the money all comes from the ads. The consumer gets the best deal because the search results are relevance-ordered, rather than merchant-fee ordered.  Well, I looked at those long outbound URLs and presumed they were affiliate. Even if there aren’t now, I’m sure there will be affiliate relationships in the future. And even if it’s monetized solely by ads, my argument still holds: the content creators won’t see a cent of that money.  Pete, I feel like your issue with ShopWiki (or shopping wikis in general) stems from the fact that you (rightfully so) place most of the importance on the CONTENT of the wiki and not its infrastructure. And because those responsible for the infrastructure of the wiki are getting paid and not its contributors, you feel like that this is an imbalance in compensation. Whereas, with blogging for example, the contributors can directly benefit from their work. Am I right?  My rebuttal to this would be: 1) the infrastructure IS very important in the case of a shopping wiki because of the transient and unorganized nature of consumer products, 2) contributing to a shopping wiki can be self-promoting (for example, we encourage bloggers to link to their posts on ProductWiki), and 3) a shopping wiki is providing a useful service and should be compensated.  [Disclaimer: I’m a ShopWiki employee but I speak for myself.]  The big difference between ShopWiki and other shopping search engines is precisely that it favors improving the user experience over squeezing out revenue from every inch of its site.  Two questions: 1) What do consumers want from a shopping search? 2) What do consumers want from a buying guide?  I would say, for the first: More stores, more products, a better chance of finding exactly what they want (instead of the very limited — paying merchants only — selection from the other sites).  For the second: Advice from other shoppers; straight-talk; useful info pulled from all over the place (thus the external links)….all toward creating a good guide to knowing what to look for before you buy.  ShopWiki does both. There’s no contradiction. Both serve the consumer. And I think (or rather hope) that the people who write, edit and read the wiki buying guides find they’re being provided a useful service (per Erik’s comment). Pete, you’re doing an interesting thing at ProductWiki. But I think it’s only part of the solution to navigating online shopping.  Whoops. Meant to say Erik in that last line. Don’t want to misplace my compliments (though I should commend you, Pete, on Mashable).  No one except webdorks know what a wiki is. These sites need a total overhaul in their general way of doing things. the layouts are all wrong for the kind of mainstream users you need to make the site really useful. Like the aggregation of product reviews from Amazon, New Egg, etc. But the implementation needs a lot of work.  I do like the concept of a “search engine” for news, but not really for products and services. I agree with Erik, products are about the people, not about grabbing products and listing prices, etc. on it. It’s not social to me. I want to know how others have experienced the product. I want the tips…the what-to-look-for kind of advice.  I have been a beta tester for cheapr.com, and I like their approach. I think its easy to use and free flowing. I get what they are all about. For me, shopping is trying to get the BEST DEAL, being informed by friends, colleagues and family - not just from search engine. It’s not personal; not from a REAL person.  The other day, a friend of mine told me of a good deal he found on Melrose, here in LA, for this cool shirt (don’t remember the name), I told him to share it with the community. So those who live in the LA community can appreciate that deal.  I think the cheapr.com concept is social and ease of use. With cheapr.com, I get it.  No one except “webdorks” knows what googol means and that hasn’t stopped Google from being hugely successful. This is true for Wikipedia as well. Do they need an overhaul in “their general way of doing things”?  Joseph, cheapr.com looks pretty nice and I like the concept. While this site deals with, well uh, deals, ProductWiki focuses on the research aspect of the shopping experience.  Say I’m in the market for a turntable, can you point me to a site that simply lists all of my options in an organized fashion? What about espresso machines? Sure, you could probably find partial lists here and there, but we want to be able to consistently deliver this information.  It is the “non-personal” aspects of these these kinds of sites that bothers me. I fail to see the “wiki” aspect to them. I am sure they regard the “guides” nee filters that are created by users as the “wiki” part. Once you have gotten your information, you are still left with a number of questions that you will want from other people like: What is the quality of the turntable? What feature is better than another? What are people experiences with the turntable? Are there better deals? A site like cheapr.com can help you get those answers.  Have you looked at ProductWiki? You can discuss, write/read reviews, post links, upload images, manage personal lists, etc. The aggregation of products provide the framework for the social aspects. I don’t understand where the “non-personal” part fits in in our case.  is anyone else as unimpressed as i am by shopwiki? productwiki is a better attempt, but i have yet to see a successful social commerce site  yub.com had traction, but if you view its traffic on Alexa, it has been rapidly declining  commerce needs to be seamlessly integrated into online social activities…the current approach of building social features around commerce is innately flawed because of the “in your face” commercialism  commerce needs to be seamlessly integrated into online social activities…the current approach of building social features around commerce is innately flawed because of the “in your face” commercialism  Exactly! Although you can be commercial if there’s a selfish motivation - see Kaboodle etc.  i don’t get it. why do we care if shopwiki isn’t personal? it’s a search engine! if i know i want product x, regardless of where i figured out that i want it, even on productwiki, i’ll go look for it on a search engine. is everyone willing to give up using the google-types, the orbitz-types, etc. b/c theyre “not personal”? as for the wiki….wikipedia is not exactly social and that doesn’t make it any less helpful.  In my opinion, Wikipedia’s appeal is that: 1. Gives the opportunity to express himself or herself to somebody who deep inside likes to write but for one reason or another is not a writer. 2. Lets a person “set the record straight” in something that in this person’s opinion is not right. 3. In something that for that person is IMPORTANT, which in general is difficult to say about products. 4. Lets a person be part of a global effort to build something grandiose, like the accumulation of all human knowledge. 5. Differently from most blogs, whatever the person writes will be probably read by a lot of people because of Wikipedia’s wide acceptance (Current Alexa Rank: 15). That makes it much more interesting than a blog that might be read by just a few people.  Product wikis might have the first incentive and at most the second. Even those two don’t present such a compelling incentive when we are talking about products.
ShopWiki, which launched today, is a shopping search engine crossed with a wiki. The service crawls the web for product ...