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The Features Users Deserve

If you read my last post, How we got here, you hopefully have a better understanding of why we set out to improve online product-focused communities. I thought I'd go through some of our features and explain why we believe they're important to users.

Integrated Product Reviews - In traditional forum communities, when a user decides to review a product, they start a thread. Then if someone else reviews the same product, another thread begins. You end up with incredibly useful information scattered throughout the site with no simple way to find, normalize and interpret the information. If you're curious about the overall opinion of the group, it's nearly impossible to figure it out. Our review system structures the data, ranks the products and makes it all easy to consume.

Product Profiling - If you're researching a product, it's useful to actually seek out people that own it. Or maybe you're considering an accessory for something you already own. Within communities operating on the Huddler platform, users create a product profile showing what they own or once did. So if you're curious what environmentally friendly household cleaner other people are using, it's easy to find out, and easy to see what people actually think of each option.

As we get sufficient data in the system, Huddler is a powerful platform for personalized recommendation using the Product Profiles. Ultimately, we want to enable a user to say, "I have the Samsung SCH-u740" and be told, "People with that phone use these applications, these carrying cases, and these headsets. And if you're looking for an upgrade, people who used to use that phone have moved on to these..." The same concept applies with a TV (what speaker, receiver, universal remote, etc.), skis, motorcycles, cameras, and on and on.

Tagging - Each and every product within a community has a unique tag associated with it, rather than allowing users to manually enter tags. So if you're looking for all the content in EcoHuddle about the Tesla Roadster, just check out the Tesla's tag page. In traditional communities you're stuck with search which may or may not find what you're looking for. You often waste tons of time reading things that have nothing to do with what you're looking for. Tagging is an extremely powerful tool for associating appropriate content with specific products/topics.

Wikis - How often is there a topic that a single individual has all the answers for? The whole point of an online community is to share the knowledge of the entire group. In current forums you'll often see a post that is meant to serve as a reference for users. The poster will often say, "Let me know if you have anything you'd like me to add/edit" Could anything be more inefficient?  For a great example of a community generated resource, check out EcoHuddle's Frugal Beginners Guide to Going Green.

Those are a few of the features that we believe make a huge difference to users and I hope it helps to explain why. Communities are for collaboration and sharing, we hope these features make it easier to do just that.

If you think there are other features that would make an impact, please leave a comment.

Categories: New Features

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