Richard Anson, CEO, sent over the following additional updates about the new Web site:

• aggregated content and articles on specific products
• an algorithm to rank the best products
• a summary of a products strengths and weaknesses
• a new homepage that we hope will clearly get across the message about the authenticity of our reviews

Reevoo is a UK based company that provides "trusted reviews." Reevoo already boasts over 90 million reviews! They receive customer lists from some of the largest retailers and then contact the customers for the review. This assures you that when you read a review on Reevoo, it comes from someone who actually owns the product. This is different than say Amazon who lets anyone review a product and could be affected by the company trying to keep a product's rating high.

In addition, the new Web site will help push customers back to the same retailers. Check the Reevoo FAQ for more info about how they collect reviews. I look forward to Reevoo invading the U.S. and other countries as this is (so far) the best review model out there.

Congrats to the Reevoo team for moving out of Beta. I am sure there will be a celebration in London tonight!

Reevoo

Richard Anson, Reevoo CEO, commented; "We are delighted to have the Eden team backing us. They have an outstanding track record. Their investment will allow us to enhance our service for existing retail clients, move in to new sectors and develop Reevoo.com into the definitive place for people to choose what to buy. Fake reviews are unfortunately a growing phenomenon, and we founded Reevoo to help retailers, manufacturers and consumers combat this. There is a plethora of sites out there today where it is just too easy for book reviews to be written by the author, hotel reviews by the proprietor or product reviews by the manufacturer. Ultimately consumers will lose trust in these sites and we’ve built Reevoo to help people choose what to buy based on real, genuine, confirmed reviews."

Some notes from their release:

Reevoo, the online publisher of genuine customer reviews, whose clients include Comet, Dixons, Currys, Jessops, Orange and Misco has today announced that Eden Ventures has led a $5M investment round to expand the business. The investment will make Reevoo’s genuine customer reviews service available to online shops across a wider range of product categories, as well as enhancing Reevoo’s service to current retail clients.

Reevoo was founded to address three trends: online retailers are looking to drive higher numbers of sales from visitors to their web sites; shoppers are demanding the opinion of other customers to help them choose what to buy; with the rise of fake reviews and advertorials, trust is increasingly hard to gain and maintain on the web.

Reevoo collects customer reviews on behalf of its retail clients and only confirmed purchasers receive a questionnaire giving them the opportunity to review a product. Genuine reviews help people choose what to buy based on real experiences and therefore increase conversion rates and sales for online retailers. On retail clients’ websites, shoppers can read these genuine reviews via the ReevooMark, where full customer scores and comments for that product are displayed, unedited and supported by the Reevoo badge of third party independence.

I like Reevoo and believe this is the reviews model that will work over the long run. I hope one day Amazon adapts the same model, whereby only people who have purchased the item can review it. While there will always be ways to trick the system, this is a great way to limit the liability and risk.

A side note: Richard is an extremely patient man. I had some issues with Skype recording the call to create a podcast. We tried six times before I suggested we just do it as text so there would be no more pie on my face! Thanks Richard for your patience!

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Allen: Can you provide a brief bio?
Richard: Prior to founding Reevoo, I was a Senior Manager at KPMG, was previously interim Head of Group Planning at Orange, covering 22 countries, and was on the small deals team managing investments up to £5 million at 3i. I have a PhD and MBA from the Cranfield School of Management.

Allen: What exactly does Reevoo do?
Richard: Reevoo aggregates and publishes real-world reviews across the web. Our current focus is on electrical goods, but our aim is to move rapidly across verticals.

Allen: Ok i am a bit confused, i thought that Reevoo only allowed confirmed buyers to post reviews, yet when i search for camcorder, i am offered the option to post a review to my web site and then it will show on Reevoo?
Richard: When we founded Reevoo we recognized that to be successful we needed to build a platform of authority and trust, at the heart of the business. Reviews from confirmed buyers provides this platform. To supplement this core, our aim is to aggregate reviews from across the web, reviews posted on third party sites and blogs are part of this. Review provenance is important.

Allen: Can you speak about your partners?
Richard: We currently work with large UK on-line shops like the mobile operator Orange, Currys, Comet, Dixons and Misco and serve more than 60 million reviews and ratings a year.

Allen: Can you share any upcoming partnerships?
Richard: We will be going live with Jessops, a major UK camera retailer, over the coming weeks.

Allen: What is the true benefit of a post-purchase review?
Richard: The true benefit is it has maximum trust and authority. We know that person has actually bought that product. Spam and bogus reviews are minimized, if not reduced totally.

Allen: Can you compare Reevoo’s reviews to Amazon’s reviews?
Richard: We always know that our confirmed purchaser reviewers have purchased the product, providing increased trust. We also aggregate reviews of products written by purchaser from multiple retailers creating a truly independent and impartial basket of reviews.

Allen: How do you compare yourself to a site like dooyoo? They pay their reviewers and have whats seems like hundreds of thousands of reviews.
Richard: We believe that incentivising and paying people to write, make or produce reviews introduces biases and affects quality. Our service also results in Reevoo carrying reviews on a much wider range of products – in other words “tail products”.

Allen: Who are the other current competitors for Reevoo?
Richard: A new player in the states, Bazaar Voice, appeared about one year after we stated.

Allen: So if I am a Dixon’s do you also show reviews from customers of Orange on the Dixon’s site?
Richard: Yes, we create an impartial independent basket of reviews around a product (aggregating reviews from multiple retailers) and then distribute those product reviews across our retail partners websites.

Allen: What’s the technology behind Reevoo? Any thoughts on offering RSS feeds to any web site?
Richard: We use Ruby on Rails.

Allen: How does Reevoo make money?
Richard: We charge on-line shops a fee for our service.

Allen: What’s it like to be a startup in London?
Richard: Fantastic – you should all move over…

We have access to a great talent pool, London is VC central for Europe and the team would say we have great beer!

Allen: Is Web 2.0 and web apps alive and kicking in the UK?
Richard: Getting there – probably less hype and more down to earth than what I imagine Silicon Valley is like.

Allen: Can you speak to the hReview microformat – is this something you leverage now or planning to leverage?
Richard: Ben Griffiths, our CTO, is somewhat of a leader over here in the hReview microformat area. We use the format when we aggregate reviews from blogs and also, internally, when we move reviews between different parts of our business.

Allen: You just had your one year anniversary, do you think you hit the marks you expected to?
Richard: We actually exceeded my expectations. I am proud of the number of high profile brands that we work extremely hard to support.

Allen: Any growth plans into the US and into Europe/Asia?
Richard: Our aim is to move rapidly across Europe in due course, although at this stage I would not rule out the US.

Allen: Any thoughts on provided confirmed reviews on ecommerce services? i think this could be a huge market – so before you buy from xyz.com you can see confirmed reviews rather than just seeing random reviews across the web?
Richard: This something in our pipeline, which we will be talking about to our partners in due course.

Allen: What do you think are the most important characteristics that are needed for a startup to be successful?
Richard: Belief, Resilence and a Top Team. I cannot emphasise the people aspect enough. It may be a huge cliché, but very very true.

Allen: what would you say is the top thing you have learned since you started reevoo? positive or negative?
Richard: Why didn’t I do it sooner!

Screenshots – click to enlarge

Thanks for participating Richard and thanks to you for reading. I have liked Reevoo since my first review because of the trust factor. I look forward to your introduction into the US one day!

If you would like to participate in a conversation on CenterNetworks, or if you have any comments or questions, let me know.