UnSpun by Amazon

Have you ever wanted to know the finest restaurant in a city or the top tasting Belgium beer? Most likely if you were to “Google it” you would be brought to someone’s blog where a few people would list their opinions.  Well UnSpun by Amazon helps solve this problem.

UnSpun is a new technology that allows users to rate their opinions.  This website doesn’t just rate favorite books, but opinions on finest restaurants in a city, best baseball player on steroids, top movie choices, and famous people you would leave your partner for.  Other opinion categories include worst smell in bathrooms, the best thing about first dates, or your favorite South Park character.  Any category a user can think of, they can create.

Users are able to create their own accounts enabling them to start their own categories, post lists on their blogs, and add comments about certain items.  The website ranks each item by a computed score depending on the number of people who have ranked it.  The score is indexed so that every 3^rd item is always 1000. This is so top items between categories can be compared.

Many people disagree with Amazon when they describe this new website as a “community collaboration on the web for developing consensus rankings.”  Top critics believe it is not a valuable source to obtain factual information but merely a website for entertainment. While others believe this website is exactly what people need to find out valuable information. Amazon has tried to make this website credible by making users log into an account and only allowing them to vote once per category.  This is so no one can keep voting on their favorite item, causing it to win. 

This website is exactly what every marketer and advertiser would love in order to understand how consumers feel about a company’s product.  However, Amazon’s goal is to make UnSpun one of the best websites on the internet, so they allow users to edit items, merge them with others, mark items that are offensive, and are even able to remove items from lists.

My question would be since users are able to edit the categories and remove items, is it not a reliable source for research and just a website for entertainment?  Would it be more reliable if people were not allowed to edit the categories?  Do you think a website like this one is needed for advertisers? What would make this website more credible?  Would this information be valuable if you were an account planner? 

UnSpun Website

Posted by guest author, Kaitlyn Kleck.

Comments

[V. Stephens]

Since users are able to edit the categories and remove items, it is like a wiki. Usually it seems that the public corrects errors to a high degree to prevent misinformation from going out.
If there are citings to verify the data and a trackback on the posters so that one could see who might have a motivation to slant information it would guarantee better results overall.

Yes, I think this website needs advertisers, although that would defeat the purpose of it as an objective information source. But the page is bare.

This website would be more credible if it was better used and organized by topic. This information might be valuable if you were an account planner, more for a popular culture pulse check than anything else.

[Sabrina DeMartini]

I think that Unspun is an awesome, entertaining, randomly fabulous online tool; however, it is not a reliable source for research. On any website that people can edit the categories or information, I feel that it should not be considered a “source” of valid info. Take Wikipedia for example. When it first came out, I thought it was something like dictionary.com, but more specific/detailed. I decided not to use Wikipedia in my research papers anymore once Steven Colbert got his viewers to edit the definition of elephants to say that “the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months.” This proved to me that I am completely unaware of what other “facts” have been edited by people on the internet, so I feel that sites should be blunt in saying that they’re either a closed website or open to edits by the public. If people weren’t allowed to edit the categories on Unspun, it would be more reliable, BUT it would not be as fun. It’s a site that celebrates random thought and random interests. It encourages thinking about the little, and sometimes silly, things in life that we think are too trite to ponder. It’s like an open-minded, non-judgmental communication tool that people can voice their opinions and thoughts on.

I think that this site would be extremely helpful to account planners. These random thoughts could be investigated and turned into insights about the consumer (i.e. what are the commonalities of someone who likes Kenny from South Park and likes to order chocolate ice cream after dinner on a first date?).

All in all I feel that Unspun is a great way to unload all of the random thoughts floating around in your brain onto something tangible. It’s a great place to wander through when brainstorming because you never know when someone’s random thought process will spark the “Ah ha!” moment you’ve been searching for.

[Andrea Schneider]

Is UnSpun a valuable research tool? Yes. It just depends what kind of research. Because of its wiki nature it isn't a credible quantitative tool. For example it would be unwise to deduce that strawberries are the most popular red fruit (http://unspun.amazon.com/Favorite-Red-Fruit/list/show/11165).
But you could ask why? Why do people feel they like strawberries so much? I'm sure more people eat apples than strawberries. Interesting..

UnSpun could be a great qualitative tool. It has its pulse on culture and cuts a window into what people think is valuable, entertaining, useful, important, interesting, etc. As a planner you could take a look at what people are ranking rather than what the rankings are. What are also the most popular lists? What are people talking about? What are they engaging with? I think this type of information is often more valuable than quantitative research in which you were to survey x amount of people from y demographic. A good strategic planner is intuitive and can also find value in messy data like UnSpun that, while not completely accurate, may actually be more insightful.

Once UnSpun gains more popularity like Wikipedia has, there will be more depth of information. Just think at the type of information and sweet nuggets you could glean from comments. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could also filter responses by gender, age, location, etc.? As a creative, I also see UnSpun as filled with great pop culture moments and inspiration. Out of curiosity I looked up "indie" and found a great list of Best Indie Music Females with some great music I already have as well as other amazing artists I'd never heard of.

I think letting UnSpun develop organically will also allow the information become more "accurate." Other collaborative sites have evolved to become more useful. Now Flickr is filled with rich, creative and informative goodness. You can search for all sorts of tagged photos. You can also view photo pools and groups of interesting things (like stick figures in peril http://www.flickr.com/groups/stickfiguresinperil/).
Mashups have allowed you to view and interpret these collections in new ways.

The type of information in UnSpun could also provide a great starting point for more in-depth, credible research.

[JenJohnson]

From observation of the website and in reference to a previous post, UnSpun reminds me of Wikipedia. Since I have had many professors prohibit the use of Wikipedia for their classes, I have always questioned the authenticity of the material found on the website. In the case of UnSpun, I find the website more practical for entertainment rather than research. If users were not able to edit the categories on UnSpun, then the website may be a more reliable source for research. However at the same time, if the site were to make this change, it may not be as appealing to the current users. Perhaps this factor is a major contributor to the site’s popularity.

As far as whether or not a site like this is needed for advertisers, I feel that a site similar to this only targets a specific audience. If an advertiser wanted to gather information from a small, segmented audience in a particular region, this site might prove to be beneficial for gathering research. On the other hand, this site doesn’t lend well to advertisers who wish to gather research from a large age range of individuals. In order to make UnSpun more credible, users should not be able to edit the categories and remove items on the site. If I were an account planner, I feel that this site could be beneficial if my client were a locally-owned business in a particular area. If this were the case, I would consider starting a new “category” with my client as the subject and see what kinds of responses and feedback I received on the site. Maybe the information gathered from this could give me a sense of how my client is viewed by some consumers in the area.

[Godina Lai]

When read about UpSpun, I thought of wikipedia. People are free to give out answers and edit the contents. They can remove and add new things anytime they want. However, many people found that wikipedia is not reliable because of the random editing. Readers can be able to search different kinds of information through wikipedia.
I think UpSpun has a very similar idea with wikipedia; therefore, if planners consider it as a resource for research, the information that they can gather would not be effective. It is because the information posted up is not proven. Planners will get the accurate trend on people’s behavior but they cannot collect data on how people react to the topic discussed on UnSpun. To a certain extent it would be more reliable if people were not allowed to edit the categories or they had to sign in as a real person to edit them. They have to be responsible for what they have posted. However, I think it is a trend that people would like to click on this website to look for new things. Advertisers can use this website to put on a poll to observe the behaviors. It can be supplementary research for advertisers. If people have to sign up for an account in order to post the categories, it would be more effective to the advertisers to track people’s trends on the discussed topics. This website is credible to observe the trend of people’s behavior. Although they can edit the content freely, they still like to go on parts that they want to know and discuss about.

[Molly Horner]

I don’t think wiki sites like Wikipedia and UnSpun should be considered “credible” sources. At first I thought that Wikipedia had employees that went through and edited the content. But after recently reading about how the content on Wikipedia is collectd, I know that the information provided by the website is only correct if users are willing to go through and make the [correct] changes they feel necessary. This totally takes away any credibility I thought Wikipedia had. If someone reads something on the site that they know is incorrect, the information isn’t going to be changed unless that person, who may be lazy and not want to take the time to change it, changes it. There is no credibility there. The fact that anyone on UnSpun can edit the categories makes it a wiki, and no wiki is a “credible source.”

I think that UnSpun could be considered a reliable source if people were not allowed to edit the categories, because once someone added his/her vote to the category, the list would just accumulate and could then be considered valid information. I think the information found on a website like UnSpun could be useful to advertisers only if the categories couldn’t be edited. When the categories become edited, the original information is lost, and perhaps becomes inaccurate, which then wouldn’t really help account planners truly find out about their consumers.

But as I think Sabrina said, the wacky information that the site provides could inspire that “ah ha” moment, and then it of course would be considered helpful.