Embracing the Dialogue

November 17th, 2006

We’d always envisioned Expo as a place where consumers and companies (or marketers or manufacturers or advertisers…or whatever else you’d like to call them) would interact. The idea was to empower consumers to express their undiluted views on products while letting marketers make their pitch right there at the same time with Expo playing a relatively minimal ‘refereeing’ role. We’ve been focused on the consumer expression part and so we’d be the first to admit that we haven’t totally figured out how to integrate companies into the dialogue.

Well, along came a great VideopinionSM review on the Play Hard Flashflight and not long after came a comment submitted by the company, including a promotional code for Expo members to use when buying the product. Now we’ve got a dialogue going! Our instinct is that this is exactly the kind of interaction we’d like to see on the site and so we’re supporting & even promoting it to understand the kind of reaction that people have. Interesting questions certainly get raised as users create VideopinionSM reviews that lead to corporate interest in participating on the website. For example, how do we make sure that creators continue to feel celebrated for creating critical reviews? Can we convince manufacturers that critical reviews are just as important to understand and embrace? We don’t know for sure where it all leads, but as long as the dialogue is authentic, respectful and open, we’re certainly interested in continuing down the path.

Let us know your thoughts.

Entry Filed under: Life as a Start Up