Trusted Opinion
Built around the notion that the best way to get recommendations is through a trusted peer group, Trusted Opinion calls itself a social recommendation network and has about 750,000 members. Recommendations are currently confined to movies, but the plan is to expand the site to include other entertainment categories like nightclubs, restaurants and books and, ultimately, all types of local services.
Trusted Opinion applies a higher "weight" to recommendations from people in one's immediate network. It applies less weight to reviews from people in other networks who are tangentially connected to those in one's immediate network, and so on down the line. "Our site gives you a percentage score with how you compare to other people on the site," cofounder Todd Greene explains. "So you can browse profiles and find people who share the same tastes in film as you, and you can include them in your recommendation network so that their opinion counts higher than an average stranger on the site."
Upon reading a review, a member can then take several actions, including purchasing a ticket from Fandango, buying the film from Amazon or sticking the movie into his/her Netflix queue. "As we go forward," says Greene, "there are other affiliated monetizing strategies we have, built around suggesting similar movies that you may want to rent, or to buy from Amazon, that are similar to the movie you're checking out."
The network was launched a year ago to prove that peer-group influence is a more effective way to predict consumer behavior than mathematical algorithms. Over the past year, Greene and his partners have learned that the more features they introduce, the more time a user averages on the site. One such feature allows members to give "respect points" to other members. As members accumulates points for reviews, they can advertise themselves as "elite," "pro," or other designated membership levels. Greene says this feature accomplishes two main objectives: It allows members to gain status on the network, and it gives Trusted Opinion a way to identify influential members. It's this second point that may prove to be Trusted Opinion's greatest monetization opportunity.
"One of the things we're talking about with potential partners is the ability to identify the mavens in the network," Greene says. "So, within a particular social group in our site, we can find out who's influencing the crowd."
As Trusted Opinion continues to expand its scope -- both in categories and applications -- these "mavens" will no doubt be of great interest to marketers looking for more-targeted opportunities.
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