Wize.com is yet another example of how we’re picking up the threads we’ve spun like cotton-candy twirlers who’ve had too much to drink. (Ah, metaphors!) It aggregates customer reviews of products from the multiple sites where they’re written, and factors in professional reviews and “buzz” to come up with “wizerank,” which I suppose they hope will become like Google’s PageRank. The site usefully links you to all those reviews, so you can see what’s up. I’m not entirely sure what “buzz” is, but here’s the buzz for the Canon xt Eos 350: “Buzz: Strong. More reviews in the last 60 days than 95% of the 602 ranked Digital Cameras.”

It makes money by selling ads but promises that it’s editorially independent.

Note that this is not a site where you review products. Rather, it aggregates reviews from elsewhere, like a decentralized ePinions. I like the idea.

Eventually I’d like to be able to pick out some people (such as my friends) as having special weight, but Wize’s decentralization may make this difficult. But that’s just my hobby horse…

Squirl.info lets you organize your stuff into “collections,” publish some or all of your collections, and meet people whose collections you like. It’s free for the first 200 items and is $10/year for the next 4,800 items. The free version puts Google ads on the pages you see. [Tags: wize squirl everything_is_miscellaneous social_software ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw