Ever since Tim O’Reilly, technology promoter and publisher, coined the term Web 2.0 for next gen web sites that encourage user-generated content, e-commerce site managers have been exhorted to develop tools for user feedback, user reviews, user ratings of content and user collaboration. The Web 2.0 trend toward more user-generated content, which is often tucked under the label of Social Media, just got another strong push.

Trusted Site and Trusted Users X 30

From surveys conducted by the live entertainment, half-price ticket seller Goldstar, which serves multiple audiences (show producers, venue managers, customer/attendees), online customers were more influenced to purchase tickets by positive user reviews at the web site than they were dissuaded by an expert critic’s negative review. Thirty times more influenced!

According to Goldstar’s Jim McCarthy, as reported in E-Commerce Times, this Trust-The-Users result was not based solely on young, web savvy concertgoers. User reviews trumped expert critics in every age cohort they surveyed; the critics’ reviews only came close to trusted user reviews in the over-60 category. As McCarthy noted: Who are you going to trust? Because live entertainment didn’t have the ability to aggregate many points of view and user reviews, like the review features on Amazon.com or Internet Movie Database, expert reviews dominated. Now user review sites like Goldstar, TicketsNow, Yelp and Yahoo Local are changing that tilt to the experts.

How Does Everyone Feel? The Sentiment Rating

Shifting attention to the consumer electronics category, the re-launched vertical search engine Retrevo shows it takes Web 2.0 User Review gospel to heart. Retrevo’s site offers real-time recommendations on best values in consumer electronics, combining value ratings from user input and expert reviews into what Retrevo calls a sentiment rating.

First, Retrevo crunches web pages from manufacturer sites, manuals, blogs and forums — all analyzed and summarized by the user’s preferences for price and features. Then, Retrevo indexes “millions” (their web site says) of user and expert reviews, articles and blog posts. This review back up is a click away from any potential electronics buyer; but Retrevo provides an at-a-glance measure by aggregating expert and user reviews into a single sentiment rating. Trusted sources with a timesaving component!

With that level of user trust, every e-commerce site and search marketer should create systems for user feedback, reviews and other tools for user-generated content. Alternatively, there’s old Web 1.0.