How ‘How it Sucks’ Sucks

Posted by Matt Cipriano | No Comments

Or, How To Make Money Off of a Weak Website That Pulls Data From Amazon and Offers Nothing New Or Remotely Interesting. But I felt that title was a bit too wordy.

I came across HowItSucks [HIS] (which I will not link to in fear that you might go to their site and artificially boost their numbers) a week or two ago and thought it was a good idea but hadn’t had a chance to check it out until today. The theory behind HIS is that when you are buying a new gadget (it is focused on Electronics) you read primarily good reviews. HIS is suppose to be bad reviews on products, highlighting their flaws so you know what you are getting yourself into before you buy. Sounds like a great concept. The problem comes from the execution.

HIS is not a user driven site in fact you cannot even become a user for the site (and actually upon further investigation seems more like a viral campaign for Amazon, but we’ll get to that in a few lines…. Basically it lists out a bunch of electronics (or you can search for the product you are buying) and when you click on one it lists both “How it Sucks” and How it Doesn’t Suck” on the same page, though these listing come from Amazon, actually the listing are just comments left on Amazon, not even a meta-review, rounding up comments left on a variety of sites, just the comments on Amazon (and from what I’ve noticed they all seem to be about 2 months old).

I am not exactly sure who the site is meant for since Amazon puts the number of reviews right at the top of the page and lets you click on the review ratings you want to read (so you can easily access the poor reviews with a single click from the product page). I assume the theory behind the site is that the founder will make money by people reading the reviews and then get a percentage when people click on the right hand side to buy the item from one of the Shopping.com links (of which Amazon is always listed). You might also notice, if you do not take my advice and choose to go to the site anyway, that at the bottom of the page it says “in association with Amazon.com” (told you I would get there).

I’ve got to say, this is one of the more pointless sites I have come upon in awhile.

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