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Once again user feedback is taking center stage on the Web. BBC News just reported that eBay will not let sellers post negative or neutral reviews of buyers. User feedback is a big deal for transactional websites like eBay or GenieTown. Unlike ad-based social sites where feedback is posted separately from the delivery of the product or service in question and, therefore, amounts to one person's opinion, marketplace websites tie activities and feedback together, which makes the written word much more impacting. Negative reputation is difficult to overcome on such sites. Since buyers do not generally hire providers who have too many negative reviews, there is little recourse for such a provider to win new business, rectify its procedures and gain positive feedback to make itself more marketable. Too much negative feedback effectively makes the online marketplace a non-viable channel for such a seller or service provider. They are forced to take their business elsewhere. And when that happens all too often, the entire marketplace suffers.
With that in mind, we're continuously enhancing the way GenieTown members are rated, reviewed and ultimately ranked. User feedback is still of course a major component of the evaluation, but using our new algorithm, we now evaluate our Genies (service providers) on many more dimensions, giving you, the customer, a more accurate reading of each person. You should pay close attention to the new rating system when you consider hiring potential Genies for your task or project.
So what's behind our new rating system? While we cannot disclose the secret formula, we can tell you that Genies who take advantage of everything GenieTown has to offer and who take an active role in the GenieTown community will be rewarded. In rating our Genies we look at the completeness of their profiles. Genies who upload images, describe their business and submit references score higher. We do this to encourage Genies to provide as much information about themselves to potential customers as possible.
We also look at how responsive Genies are to customer queries. Genies who reply to customers quickly and submit their bids when invited to do so will get higher rating by our system. Customer satisfaction is important to us, and it should be important to our Genies too.
Finally, Genies get higher ratings when they get involved in our online community. Posting articles about their trade or answering customer questions about their services will win Genies extra points. Not only that, but Genies who post online get free marketing by having their mini-profiles showcased on the community pages. This way, Genies can demonstrate their expertise and win free advertising in the process. And now they even get higher rating. Not a bad deal.
Happy bidding!
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