Comments on: Grayboxx Grows Footprint, and a Personality http://staging.blog.biakelsey.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/ LOCAL MEDIA WATCH. The Nexus of All Things Local Mon, 01 Jun 2015 22:23:47 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.39 By: Matthew Berk http://staging.blog.biakelsey.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/comment-page-1/#comment-125965 Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:53:26 +0000 http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/#comment-125965 Just so I understand…. These folks apply some pretty pyrotechnical algorithmic work, all behind the scenes, to approximate what Citysearch and Yelp have just by averaging their user ratings? I’m all for elegant algorithms, but not when there are equivalent, lower complexity, transparent proxies for decision making. Also, it seems to me that they are focused on a really interesting, worthy, difficult problem to solve… that isn’t yet really a problem. We still live in a world where just finding the right plumber–one who is local, bonded, works on radiant heat piping, and available–is a challenge. In other words, consumers’ complex decisions still aren’t well served by the discovery models we’ve provided to them, which suggests that ratings-based comparison technologies (read ranking) are helpful but also early and anticipatory….

]]> By: Mike Boland http://staging.blog.biakelsey.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/comment-page-1/#comment-125508 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:52:11 +0000 http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/#comment-125508 Thanks for the comment Troy. That is exactly the mistrust that many users have with the site. I believe the company when it says it can’t reveal this secret sauce for competitive and other reasons. But it has to realize that this secrecy is going to cost it some users, and that it has to do everything in its power to elicit trust and a warm fuzzy feeling in other ways (i.e. user reviews and video mentioned in the post).

Chandra also supports the automated ratings with the assertion that the company has compared its ratings against the reviews of sites such as Yelp and Citysearch and seen favorable (equitable) results. Those results aren’t public either so your skepticism is fair. Again this secrecy is a double edged sword for the company — being the source of its strength and the source of a considerable degree of user mistrust. Your comments represent a significant faction of users and are well taken.

]]> By: Troy http://staging.blog.biakelsey.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/comment-page-1/#comment-125491 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:55:00 +0000 http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/01/16/grayboxx-gets-more-personal/#comment-125491 I don’t get this site at all and seems strange that nobody is critical of the notion of some sort of secret algorithms for ratings. Algorithms work for Google because the results are self evident. This company just want to put a score besides a business and we are suppose to believe it. Are users really that simple and stupid?

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