Ciao USA pulled plug, site ceases to exist 1st July (ciao.com)

Member Name: Teena2003

Product:	ciao.com
Date:	06/03/09 (274 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: anyone can join, payments by paypal

Disadvantages: full of cheats and plagiarists, revenge rating, low reading/rating on proper reviews

UPDATE: Ciao USA is no more. They have pulled the plug and from 1st July members won't get access to the site any longer. Furthermore, there will be no more money to be made, pay per rate ended on 17 June after the email messages were sent to the members.

Thank you very much you cheating scum. You ruined a site with your auto translated rubbish, six lines of gibberish or straight copies from manufacturers websites. END UPDATE


In the spirit of recycling, I often post my reviews on other sites, not only on dooyoo but also on Ciao UK and the US website Helium. A little while ago I signed up with Ciao.com, the US version of the Ciao enterprise. I resurrected an old screen name I had not used for ages and decided to do something good for the environment and recycled some of my reviews by cross-posting. I carefully added a little 'hi, I don't copy but write under a number of names' on the site to make sure I wasn't going to be accused of cheating.

So, after waiting a while for ratings to come in, I noticed that readings, let alone ratings, were not forthcoming. I decided to investigate. Soon I noticed that there were new reviews, mainly on electrical goods like cameras, computers and software, coming in at around a gazillion a second and your own review stayed in the new in list for about a millisecond.

I then started to randomly read these reviews and from the first line you could see that they were not written by the person posting them. A very quick and simple Google check confirmed it. Most of the reviews I found were simply copied from other websites, including Wikipedia (if it's on Wikipedia it must be true). Then there were the reviews that were not copied but written in sub standard English and you would start tearing your hair out trying to understand what the writer was trying to say. Obviously, English was not the member's first language, but to abuse the language to such an extend where nobody could make heads nor tails of it was shocking. What was more shocking was the fact that these members, be they serial plagiarists or people who run their reviews through a translating programme, received on average squillions of reads and very helpful ratings and comments. Just looking at some comments would make you want to scream as it became blindingly obvious that the person rating and commenting did not have a clue what they were doing, let alone saying.

However, there was a light, way back on the horizon. I found a lot of UK review site members I recognised. They had come to the site to cross post, just as I had. Soon you started reading those people's reviews, knowing they were free of plagiarism and cheating. If I may I will mention some of the names that you will find when looking carefully: Koshkha, anonymili and Chocolatelady amongst many other names you may recognise. You may want to seek these members out for support and advise. There are also a few good writers from the USA there.

Ciao USA works very much like the UK site. You get paid in cents and dollars rather than pounds and pennies but the system seems to be the same, depending on the dollar ($) sign accompanying the topic, you will get paid between one and three cents, or nothing, if the category is a non paying one. I also noticed that you get one cent per read (not sure if it's member reads or your own reading and rating yet). Of course, you also get rewarded for first review in a category by being paid double.

With the Ciao USA still being in its infancy, there are still a lot of categories without reviews, in particular in hotels. There doesn't seem to be a category for travel sights yet. Furthermore, you will find that areas such as 'books' are still missing. But then, who still reads in these times, right?

Rating is pretty much the same as the UK version with ratings from excellent to not useful and off topic. However, what is different is the fact that they are paying by paypal, the globally recognised payment system.

And I think this is where Ciao USA's problem lies. The influx of members from South East Asia who are unable to read or write in coherent English is staggering. I have seen websites that are advertising Ciao.com as a quick way to making money.

While this may have been true a while back when the site first started (and paying members $1.00 per posted review, it has now come down to mainly being paid for being rated by other members, trying to add all those pennies, or cents, to get a payout.

I posted about a dozen reviews on Ciao.com so far and count myself lucky that my reviews have actually reached double figures in reading and rating. I still have a few reviews that are in single figures. But then again, I do not write in the most popular areas like electronics.

When signing up to Ciao.com be aware that they have two stages trust and friendship. You can have friends on Ciao but not necessarily have these people in you circle of trust. These two are very separate. But once you are a member you are going to be inundated by people contacting you out of the blue, never having read your reviews, asking you to become their 'friend' and they will then reward you by reading (I use this terms very loosely) and rating your reviews to maximise your earnings (thus breaking the clicking cartel rules). Whatever you do, don't give in to these spamming messages as your inbox will be full of people begging you to become their friend. But on the other hand, it does explain why sub-standard or copied reviews receive 100+ reads within a short time.

If you want to report abusers on Ciao, the system is very much the same as on the UK site, you find the appropriate category of abuse and add your grief. If you rate the reviews as well you might find yourself at the receiving end of vindictive ratings. You will also find that your reviews will get rated down for "being too comprehensive", or because "your English is too good" or an honest "I don't understand". Yet nobody stops them. At best you get revenge ratings but often these people also become very abusive when trying to explain that they are as innocent as a newborn baby and that you cannot prove they are cheaters (which you can because only stupid people copy from, for example, Wikipedia, copy everything, including short polls, footnote/referencing numbers [1] or start reviews half way through a sentence).

Also beware of the weekly and monthly competitions. Last time I checked 90% of the submissions in either category were plagiarised and were receiving high ratings from all the member's hundreds of friends. Honest and normal members do not stand much of a chance it appears as they will not reach the required numbers to have their review at the top of the list due to the weekly prices being given out on how many times you review was rated.

I read a number of reviews today and found just one to be original. And that was a review from a very well established writer who is known on a number of sites.

After all this negativity, is there anything I like about ciao.com? As mentioned before, you get paid via paypal. There are plenty of people out there who have a paypal account, and those who haven't can open one quite easily. Payment is transferred once a month but you can ask for transfer as soon as you have reached $5.00 and you can do that as many times as you like - even though you have to wait up to 5 weeks to get the money into your paypal account.

There's also the Premium fund where the best reviews will be given extra cash once a month. I haven't been on the site long enough to have experienced a premium fund payday yet and I can only hope that Ciao do not reward serial cheats over honest reviews.

I am not going to post actual review bits or comments for your amusement, just look in on ciao.com and read some of the dross yourself. You don't need to become a member to just read. It really is an eye opening experience and maybe one day, Ciao will catch up with all the abuse and delete all the cheaters that are one there tying to make a fast buck.

Summary: now defunct thanks to rampant cheating and abuse