Site Review of the Week
The Internet is abundant with sites that are bad ideas or badly executed and so I thought it was time to throw my oppinion into the mix and review a few of these sites that I think have potential.The first entrant to the list is *drumroll please*… MeOwns (http://www.meowns.com/).
Although this site stands for most things I dislike about the world (by its own admission it exists purely to ‘allow you to showcase stuff you own’, which put bluntly means ‘I can boast about the stuff that you don’t have’) it does have potential.
Problems
- Not many people want to spend hours mindlessly categorising their entire house.
- I don’t understand why anyone would want to spend time searching through and looking at the stuff that others own other than some bizzare form of voyeurism.
- It seems to have no business model.
Good things
- Pleasant user interface
- Quick to add items. The addition of a bookmarklet is a nice touch.
- The nice blog pluggin, allowing your visitors to check out your stuff.
Advice
- Improve the facebook app - Allow people to use the site to keep track of which of their facebook friends has borrowed what.
- Make it more useful - Instead of using it to allow people to boast (socially unacceptable) allow people to use the site to track their belongings and things which people have leant out.
- Embrace the community and allow people to make quick suggestions to other users.
- Add value by changing the focus of the site to reviewing the products which people own. Potentially pull in Amazon Reviews. This will improve search engine rankings and pull more users in.
************
The Right to Reply
In the interest of a fair and balanced review…
Thanks for judging meOwns so hard, and it is our honor being the first entrant in you crappy list.
But actually you are missing a big something here, all your advices are pretty developed in the website, It just seems you are releasing your criticism horses without even having a look at the website (there does exist a facebook application showing you what friends have, submitting items couldn’t be any easier with admission of all website users, there is a bookmarklet, you can import your amazon wishlist plus other dozens of features).
please have a deep look at the website to make your list more effective and valuable.
Anyway, a website featured on mashable, techcrunch, thenextweb..etc as well as tens of design galleries, doesn’t need to be discussed on your junior website.
thanks”
- Thanks Ramez. The review has been adjusted based on your comments.
Tagged as Amazon.com, Business, Computers and Internet, Facebook, Google, Social network, User interface, Web, Web Design and Development, Web search engine, Website + Categorized as Commentary, Design, Reviews