Let's hope Ciao never equals goodbye. (ciao.co.uk)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	ciao.co.uk
Date:	11/09/09 (67 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to navigate, good suggestions process

Disadvantages: No 50p

I've been a member of Ciao.co.uk for a while now, but it's only in the past couple of months that I've really been making an effort over there, mainly because of my frustrations with Dooyoo.

Ciao and Dooyoo are supposed to work on the same premise; members write reviews that should help customers when they are trying to choose a product, other members rate the review depending on how useful they find it.

I actually find that I prefer the Ciao way of life more at the moment, I've seen other people complain about the politics on Ciao, but I've never come across any, and certainly not as much as you find on Dooyoo.

I prefer the way Ciao have an additional rating for really good reviews, and this is an open rating, as opposed to the secretiveness of the crown nominations, plus you don't need a nomination from a guide in order to receive and exceptional, you just need to write and exceptional review, whereas to get a crown you either have to be a Dooyoo favourite or receive a nomination from a guide, which biases the system toward the guides and their friends.

I also prefer the suggestion system, not just for the fact the suggests rarely take more than 24 hours, and often come through in a couple of hours, rather than having to wait months for suggestions to go through. But I like the fact that you can write the review in advance and as soon as the suggestion is added to the product catalogue your review goes live. Finally receiving double the money for the first month is a nice bonus.

I prefer the navigation as well, you can get to the new reviews from every page on Ciao because it's part of their static header, whereas on Dooyoo I have to mess about going back to my account then scrolling down to find the new review link, not that it's hard work, just irritating when it'd be so simple to add a link on the header.

The reviews themselves look much better as well, firstly they have proper formatting, so you can have headings, proper bullet points, etc and you can have photos on your review. Whilst I don't particularly see the need for photos of every item, it does help when explaining in words is difficult, and travel reviews with photos are 100x better.

You might not get 50p a review over there, but I find Ciao to be a far more professional operation.

Summary: Well recommended