I just received a copy of the book "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good" by Sarah Lacy. What an excellent read. I found myself fascinated to read the stories behind many of the entrepreneurs who are taking the Web into the 21st century. So far, I've only read the prologue and the first three chapters and I can't wait to get into it further.
It has already helped me to better understand my own entrepreneurial husband. It takes a special type of personality to take risks and the intelligence to have a vision before other people actually "get it".
As I continue to make progress with this interesting book, I plan to write about what I learn.
Recommended Reading
The original vision for the Word of Mouth Network was to provide a way for consumers to exchange word of mouth recommendations. We started it in 1999 before the dot com bust. It was originally called the Recommendation Exchange or "Rex" for short.
Consumers could share their favorite restaurants, TV shows, books or hair stylist with others. We developed a new method where the reviewer selects or adds keywords or short phrases that best described the subject and then rated the relative strengths or weaknesses of those words on a one to five scale. A rating of five would be the greatest strength while a rating of one would be the greatest weakness. This rated keyword method provided a more accurate and refined search results. They could also add an optional long form comment. We were eventually awarded a patent for this new method of capturing and sharing user feedback.
We had three large beta sites at media properties that were quite popular. Unfortunately, with the dot com bust we scaled back on our pursuit. Despite the timing, we maintained the beta sites and gained much knowledge about how to motivate users to contribute content, using points as incentives for specific behaviors and as a way to manage the quality of the content.
