A few years ago I was obsessed with a PC game. I followed it throughout it’s development and when it was finally available I was straight on Amazon to buy it. To my disappointment, within only a day of being available it had received a lot of 1 star reviews from other Amazon customers. I decided to buy the game regardless and despite the reviews, I really enjoyed it. You would assume a 1 star rating would suggest a terrible product, but what is it that determines a rating? Is it how good the product was, or is it how the product matched up to our expectations? If it is the latter then surely each review is relative to the person’s expectations of the product. This creates a problem. How can we trust complete strangers to recommend what we will and will not like? A stranger would not have known that I had been following the development of this game and knew exactly what to expect.
Review sites are problematic. Everyone knows the horror stories of TripAdvisor and how scathing reviews have destroyed peoples businesses and livelihoods.
This has become a prominent topic in the news of late, so much so that a Channel 4 documentary was aired recently called Attack of the TripAdvisors. Admittedly, some of the people in this programme were, for lack of a better word, insane. Nevertheless, how are you to know which reviewers are nutters and which aren’t? Cue Stamped!
“Stamped is a new way to recommend only what you like best – restaurants, books, movies, music and more. No noise, no strangers, just the things you and your friends love.” – Apple App Store. With Stamped, you put your Stamp on anything you love, think of each Stamp as a 5 star rating. You only review things that you really, really love. What’s more, your recommendations are only shared with your friends. Chances are, you and your friends have things in common and trust each others opinions. You are much more likely to trust one friends 5 star rating than a thousand strangers’ 1 star ratings.
When you create an account on Stamped you are given 100 Stamps to start with and that’s it. The only way you can gain more Stamps is to receive Credit from a friend. If a friend thanks you for your recommendation you get Credit and in turn, more Stamps. By using this system of reviewing and thanking, the network is not clogged with people misusing their Stamps and if something doesn’t deserve that 5 star Stamp, it doesn’t get Stamped at all.
A wise woman close to my heart once said “If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and that is what Stamped is all about.
Fancy giving Stamped a go? You can download from the App Store or read more about it on their website.