Best Way to Utilize User Ratings is to Find Your Favorite!
The Web 2.0 world and social interaction has given rise to the multitude user reviews. Wherever you go, you can find user ratings or reviews at almost every website. Almost every retail store has a site, and they allow for user ratings on their products. Some sites are specifically made to provide reviews for certain products like how moviefone.com provides movie reviews. The unique difference is that these sites allow users to provide their own reviews to products, and corporate reviews are allowed as well. The Web 2.0 world has put user interaction just as high as corporate reviewers. Basically, the mass of people are supposed to be able to understand the strengths or weaknesses of a product. The mass should be able know if a product is good or not.
Reviews are everywhere for the music business, the movie business, the retail business, and even sporting events. One can get movie reviews from rental shops like www.blockbuster.com and www.hollywoodvideo.com or you can go to Best Buy’s website (www.bestbuy.com) to view movie reviews or you can go to movie review sites like www.rottentomatoes.com or www.moviefone.com. So many options exist, that it makes you wonder, which site do you trust. How can we really trust any of these sites? How do you know which sites to trust? Honestly, no answer exists to these questions and it becomes a question of personal preference. Some places like www.amazon.com provide user ratings as well as traditional corporate reviews, so sites like this may be a better option. As you can see the first picture shows a review for Shutter (a newly released movie), and users gave it a 4 out 5 stars rating, but the second picture shows the review from Rotten Tomatoes giving Shutter 7 out of 100%. Two completely opposite reviews, so users have to figure out what they trust.
Review 1 from Hollywood Video. 4 out of 5 Stars for Shutter.
Review 2 from Rotten Tomatoes. 7 out of 100% for the same movie Shutter.
So what are the major differences between the current user rating and the old traditional review system? The only way to get reviews previously was to pick up your local newspaper or to read a magazine on popular culture. Local newspapers used to provide a single person’s personal review. His only accreditation is that he has seen many movies. However, a lot of these reviewers cannot say how they truly feel about a movie, because they are afraid a company may not support them for being controversial. User ratings not only provide chances for as many opinions as possible, but they allow users to truly speak their minds. User reviews are seldom enforced as long as bad words, racially targeted material, and graphic examples are left out. However, these reviews are only reported by the users, so only users can report other users. Even newspapers and magazines have had to embrace the new Web 2.0 world, and they have provided for user reviews on their websites. Let user ratings reign and find the source that fits your appetite, because many sources do exist.
-Chris Noel
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