My reason for joining MS was to read reviews on books. On sites like amazon, one reads reviews from a global perspective, while I was looking for an Indian one. Frankly, the Indian sites on blogging had been disappointing as a whole. When doing a search, I stumbled on MS and decided it should be tried. I found some deficiencies, which I pointed to the management and they acknowledged too.
Now, after almost 3 1/2 months here I am really puzzled . This site has hardly any hit rate. How did it become acknowledged as a leading product review site? I am not talking of ratings and comments but the visits to the reviews.
I may be absolutely wrong but these are my impressions
1. The site functions like a club where the members who are close knit tend to comment, counter-comment(this is funny-commenting and replying on one’s own review) .rate each other VU(at times without reading). Some such members also meet and talk on telephones. So, okay it is a great community. But I thought this was to be a site to share experiences of products.
2. BOOKS section is the most neglected one. In general bloggers are those who are fond of reading. Every day, with great anticipation, I click on the books section. In a week there will be no more than 5 reviews in books of all categories.I wrote my first review on 5 best books on 30 Dec 2006. So far only 41 members have visited it. I just cannot imagine why. Okay you may not like my style of writing but I am talking of 1st visit here and not repeat visits or ratings.439 non-members have visited it so far. How come? Is this site accessed by non-members 10 times more often than members. If those are not being converted into members, is there not something wrong somewhere?
3. The highest hit rate has been in the financial write-ups. Yet no one writes there, with 4 of the last 5 reviews on mutual funds having been written by me. Each has had over 600 non-member visits, almost 3 times those of visits to books, tourism, aeroplane etc. Member visits have been pathetic(11 to 17 per review) as in cases of most reviews by non-star/older-age writers. Have the staff here noted this demand for financial write-ups
?. I write on some other web financial sites where I get up to 10000 hits and replies, so for me these numbers of MS are low but as a group/category on MS this is significant. Probably more people need to write on financial products than on cough remedies or pain abdomen.
4. I consider myself a good writer and a better researcher, despite what my ratings here may be. The fact that my write-ups do not have much member visits or comments is not due to lack of effort in writing on my part. It is simply( as I think)because this site has a pre-dominantly younger crowd who gladly visit their peers. Also, people log on, mainly to write and quickly scan their trusted circle’s review, rate it and ignore it. My comments on another international site on the’last mughal’ drew hundreds of responses in a couple of hours, while here my 2 reviews on this contemporary book have had only 9 and 13 member visits respectively and 80 non-member visits-in 3 weeks’time. This in the year when 150 years of mutiny is being celebrated.
5. My review on Citibank(the first one) spent 24 hours on the front page as review of the day, yet had only 28 member visits but 511 non-member visits.
6. The picture is not much different in case of star writers. The only difference is that they have about 50 member visits and 30 comments(half their own replies) by the end of the day. In terms of non member visits they are no better. Cousin2 has had 90 non-member visits to a fantastic review written on 2nd April 2007, as against 84 non-member visits to my review around the same time.(7 members and 2 comments on my review)
7. Some members are in such a tearing hurry to increase volumes of comments(do they want to become star writers?) that they add 10 favourites to their circle every day. I noted with interest the ratings given by one such member -all star writers and boys/girls in their 20s got VU while rest got U(including self). One chap who had crossed this member with an adverse comment, got a NU.The quality of reviews had no bearing atleast in most cases.Yet another marked a review of mine’somewhat useful’ after I had rated the person’s review as that.(promptly a condolence letter came from MS, asking me to re-visit and improve my review)
8. What I am pointing out here is that the projections of visits to this site may be wrong. Or else, people are not reading, just writing their own reviews. Or may be the movies and music are more popular(categories I do not visit).
9. I am 53 years old, successful and self-assured. To me it does not matter what rating I get. I just like to write.(before cynics ask me to go to my own age group, I am member of 50 plus groups too) and share with all age groups. Since I do take pains to write my reviews, it does not hurt if there was some readership, without any malice. However, even if there is not, a guy like me can always shift sites and carry on.
10 . However, the administrators of the site would do well to take note of the numbers which do not do justice to the hype and advertising of MS
I may be absolutely wrong, in which case I apologise but my intention in writing this have been noble and not to insult anyone or dilute the importance of the site or the writers, star and others.
Added after 1st comment- I mean why reply to a comment in one’s own review column? The reply should be on the web page of the person who has commented so he/she can read it.(this is what most diary sites follow). If there is a reason for this, I’d like to be enlightened.