Deal Radar 2008: Wize Ranks Products

We profiled Tom Patterson, CEO of Wize.com last year. The site compiles both expert and user reviews and inserts them into a scoring algorithm to rank products. The site’s proprietary WizeRank gives each product a 1 – 100 score, utilizing collective wisdom ferreted from all over the web.

Web 3.0 and Verticalization

I have worked with the Web 3.0 framework for months now, and taken a crack at defining how the web is likely to evolve in the future. So here’s a recap of the thesis so far. I will be adding a dimension to this framework shortly, so it is a good time to stop and

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Entrepreneurship Case Studies

You have read many of my interviews on this blog. Here’s a synthesis of some of the case studies I have done, in an interview format. These differ slightly from the series that I have titled Role Model Interviews, since in this series, I go into the company and its strategy, market, financing, etc. in

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eBay’s Next Few Acquisitions

eBay’s StumbleUpon acquisition is done. I wrote about it, in eBay’s Foray’s into Media. Not much to add on the topic, except that the price has changed. eBay eventually ended up acquiring the company for $75 Million. One critical point I made in my previous analysis is that eBay needs to plug the leakage in

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Wize Needs Integrated User Experience

We have reviewed the business story of Wize.com, now let’s take a look at their product from my Web 3.0 framework perspective. Context The Context in which you would come to Wize, is Product Research. The key to Wize is the Wize Rank, which is algorithmically derived from Expert Reviews and User Reviews culled from

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Wize up on what to buy (Part 4)

Wize is a relatively new entrant to the product research field, and unlike its competitor Become, does not offer an integrated search experience whereby you can do your product research as well as comparison shopping for price within the same environement. I gave this feedback to Tom, and he agrees, that the fragmented user experience

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Wize up on what to buy (Part 3)

[Part 1] [Part 2] I asked Tom for a TAM analysis, as I ask all entrepreneurs. The analysis is not as crisp as what Shiva presented, and I suggest you tighten it up, Tom. I think, the segmentation also needs finetuning. Nonetheless, here it is. SM: How big is the market for what you have

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Wize up on what to buy (Part 2)

In Part 1, I introduced you to Wize, a 6-month old product research engine. Product Research has been around on the web since the ancient days of Web 1.0. epinions, for example, made a gallant attempt to become the place where the entire web’s products were reviewed. Today, the site has significant momentum with millions

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