Epinions
Ramanathan Guha, Mike Speiser, Dion Lim | |
URL | www |
---|---|
Commercial | yes |
Launched | 1999 |
Current status | defunct in 2018 |
Epinions.com was a general
Corporate history
Epinions was founded in 1999, during the dot-com bubble, by Nirav Tolia (who left Yahoo and $10M of unvested shares), Naval Ravikant (formerly of @Home where he left $4M in options), Ramanathan Guha (from Netscape by way of AOL where he left ~$4M in stock options), Mike Speiser (formerly of McKinsey), and Dion Lim (formerly of Morgan Stanley) with $8 million in seed financing from venture capitalists Benchmark Capital and August Capital.[3][4]
By January 2003 it had 5.8 million users, but all of the founders other than Tolia had left, and the company had just started to make a profit in 2002. In the words of Tolia: "We felt we couldn't finish what we started because we had a little problem. We needed a viable business model."[5]
In 2003, the company
In January 2005, the four co-founders who had left and other Epinions employee-stockholders filed a lawsuit against Tolia and the two VC firms that provided seed funding. The suit claimed that the defendants "failed to share with them 'material facts concerning Epinions' financial affairs,' including news of a deal with Google that the company knew would increase its 2003 profit by 1,400 percent".[4] The case was settled by December 2005; financial terms were not disclosed.[7]
In June 2005 eBay and Shopping.com announced that eBay would acquire Shopping.com for $634M[8] and the transaction was completed in August of that year.[9]
The company started relatively early in the history of
Epinions also faced competition from niche sites like
On February 25, 2014 the company announced that as of March 25, 2014, all Epinions community features and member login would be removed and/or disabled from the Epinions website. The staff at Epinions made it clear the community members would no longer be able to delete or edit their content submissions, and that their submissions would remain on Epinions and the eBay networks without future compensation.[11]
No new product reviews appeared on the site after March 2014; the site was shut down and redirected to shopping.com in May 2018.
Mechanisms
Authors were paid for reviews on a vast catalog of items, but other site users determined how visible any given review was.[10]
Epinions.com's
Early in 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed co-founder Mike Speiser and early member Brian Koller, with Speiser claiming the system prevents advertorials from getting exposure, but Koller saying: "There is a lot of 'You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,' and mutual admiration societies. You recommend me and mine, I’ll do the same for you."[13]
The site was also recognized in 2007 by the "Internet for Beginners" writer for
See also
References
- ^ a b "What Happened To Epinions". October 24, 2023.
- ^ "Epinions.com - FAQs: Earnings on Epinions". Archived from the original on May 25, 2007.
- ^ Po Bronson for The New York Times Magazine. July 11, 1999. Instant Company Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Gary Rivlin for The New York Times. January 27, 2005 Epinions founders say they were bilked Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Saul Hansell for The New York Times. March 12, 2003. Dealtime Agrees to Buy Epinions Archived 2013-12-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Gary Rivlin for The New York Times. November 1, 2004 The I.P.O. Succeeded. Who Was Rewarded? Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Mark Boslet for Dow Jones News. December 8, 2005 VCs, Epinions workers settle high-profile legal dispute Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Staff, The New York Times. June 3, 2005 Ebay buys Shopping.com Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Staff, Silicon Valley Business Journal. Aug 30, 2005. eBay completes acquisition of Shopping.com Archived 2021-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Eric Goldman (March 12, 2014). "Epinions, The Path-Breaking Website, Is Dead. Some Lessons It Taught Us". Forbes.
- ^ "Epinions". www.shopping.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-13. Retrieved 2014-03-13.
- ^ "Epinions.com - Feedback:". Archived from the original on January 11, 2007.
- ^ Kirby, Carrie; Writer, Chronicle Staff (January 22, 2000). "EVERYONE'S A CRITIC / A Worthy Epinion Can Earn You Some Cash". SFGate. Archived from the original on January 9, 2021. Retrieved April 20, 2019.
- ^ "There's a Lot of Info Online....and These Are the Most Useful Websites". Archived from the original on 2021-01-09. Retrieved 2007-06-04.
- ^ "Site of the day - California Central Coast News KCOY CBS Channel 12 Santa Maria San Luis Obispo Santa Barbara". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-06-04.