Revlayer challenges ExpoTV on ethics
An interesting discussion has broken out between Revlayer and ExpoTV. Both presented at last week’s Web2NewYork networking party.
Revlayer’s founder Allen Stern at CenterNetworks questions whether the filtering policy of video review site ExpoTV is ethical. At the W2NY meetup ExpoTV’s Thi Luu had said they let retailers pick what they show.
‘That just does not sit well with me,’ Stern wrote on his blog.
Thi Luu responded there are practical reasons to leave it up to retailers. ‘Video is a new medium for most retailers and comparison shopping engines,’ Luu wrote. ‘They haven’t yet been able to build into their sites the sorting functionality about the content being positive or negative.’
ExpoTV’s CEO Daphne Kwon added: ‘All of our syndication partners publish all of our video reviews – positive and negative – for all products and that we have never been asked by any of our partners for even the data required to publish only positive reviews.’
I’m not going to take sides in this one.
July 24th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Hi Peter, thanks for your post. Couple of clarifications:
CenterNetworks is my blog and I was reporting as the editor of CN not the owner of Revlayer.
My question about ethics was simple based on what was said at last weeks meetup. What I heard was that their syndication partners can select whether positive or negative reviews were/are shown. I am going to meet with ExpoTV in the near future (hopefully next week) for an interview to find out more about the company as I think their idea is a great one. Video is where it’s at and video reviews are hot. I also appreciate Daphne’s response as that has clarified the misunderstanding at the meetup.