Rapleaf - Buyer And Seller Rating System
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I have started to use a website called Rapleaf. http://www.rapleaf.com . It launched only a couple days ago. Its a buyer/seller rating system that looks like the ebay feedback system. However, this you can use on ANY purchase ever. Combine non forum ratings with forum selling feedback and so on. I have signed up and rated faith for the SS Brake Line GB. The site works like a charm smile.gif. Heres the review from TechCrunch, the leading reviewer for Web 2.0 websites and a highly thought of guy.
Hope this helps some of you out. BTW, I'll post the code you can use in the forums to get the icon similar to my sig a bit later.
http://www.rapleaf.com
-00
QUOTE
Rapleaf to Challenge Ebay Feedback
Posted by Michael Arrington | Discussion: 60 comments
eBay’s feedback system is, arguably, their most valuable asset. It provides the grease necessary to make complete strangers comfortable enough to buy and sell from each other. But it’s a closed system - only eBay transactions can affect a user’s feedback score. And as much as eBay doesn’t like it, these users (and more) buy and sell stuff through services other than eBay all the time, online and offline. There is tremendous demand for third party services to incorporate eBay’s feedback system into their applications to make them more usable. But don’t expect to see eBay embrace mashups any time soon, or ever.
Last year I asked for an open version of eBay’s feedback system to be created (see no. 3 here). I also suggested that iKarma, who’s in this space, make changes to their product to address this larger market. But until now, no one came at this problem head-on.
Enter Rapleaf, a new San Francisco-based service created by Auren Hoffman and Manish Shah that is a fully open version of eBay’s feedback system. It’s in private beta, but will be launching to the public on May 7, 2006.
Rapleaf will allow anyone to leave feedback for anyone they’ve transacted with. Others can use this feedback to help them determine if they are doing business with someone who’d likely to engage in fraud. Rapleaf is eBay feedback for the rest of the web, and the offline world.
There are three important things to understand about Rapleaf - the interface and basic feature set, fraud prevention and detection, and their API set and related policies.
Interface and Features
Rapleaf allows any user to leave feedback for anyone (whether they are a user or not), based on a unique email address or phone number. Type that identifier into the search bar. If no results occur, you can be the first to leave feedback for that person. This can be someone you’ve bought or sold with, or just a friend that you want to endorse. Like eBay, a free-text area is included for comments in addition to a positive/neutral/negative rating.
A person’s feedback rating is a raw score, with a point added for a positive review and a point subtracted for a negative review (just like eBay). Non-transaction endorsements are calculated and shown separately. Various stats are calculated and displayed based on feedback ratings by others (see screen shot below).
Fraud Prevention and Detection
eBay knows when two people have transacted. That removes a lot of fraud issues (although a big issues on eBay has been users selling thousands of low priced items to jack up their feedback and then engaging in fraud with high ticket items). Rapleaf won’t have this luxury, and so they are focused on preventing and detecting fraud in their system.
First, any feedback left of a user can be challenged. At first this will be handled by Rapleaf employees. Later, they will probably use a third party to handle disputes.
Rapleaf will also employ human and machine based analysis of all feedback to look for patterns that suggest fraud, particularly in boosting a feedback rating. A user can probably get a an extra point or two every few months without being detected. But co-founder Auren Hoffman tells me he’s confident that they will be able to detect any large scale fraud attempts and shut the offending account(s) down.
He won’t disclose his trade secrets, of course, and so I have no way of telling if he’s right. But if they’ve nailed this issue, the biggest one facing them, then they’ll have gone a long way to achieving success.
Open, Open, Open APIs
Rapleaf will (on launch) deploy an API to allow third parties to access the key parts of the service. Account creation, review creation and feedback scores will all be accessible, and free, to third parties who choose to integrate. For non-eBay shopping sites, Rapleaf will be a competitive leveler. And if enough sites start to integrate with Rapleaf over time, the data will become even more relevant than eBay’s.
Final Thoughts
If Rapleaf succeeds in their plans, it will make the Internet a better place to do business. And Rapleaf won’t be limited to online transactions - there is no reason that transactions occuring offline can’t be measured by Rapleaf as well. The fact that an identifier can also be a phone number tells me that Rapleaf is already thinking this way.
Business development will be an important area for Rapleaf to nail. Their APIs will spur countless mashups without a direct business deal. But I also expect to see some big retailers, classified sites and shopping engines integrate with Rapleaf over time. That will require a good business development team to search out and close those deals.
Additional Screen Shots:
Posted by Michael Arrington | Discussion: 60 comments
eBay’s feedback system is, arguably, their most valuable asset. It provides the grease necessary to make complete strangers comfortable enough to buy and sell from each other. But it’s a closed system - only eBay transactions can affect a user’s feedback score. And as much as eBay doesn’t like it, these users (and more) buy and sell stuff through services other than eBay all the time, online and offline. There is tremendous demand for third party services to incorporate eBay’s feedback system into their applications to make them more usable. But don’t expect to see eBay embrace mashups any time soon, or ever.
Last year I asked for an open version of eBay’s feedback system to be created (see no. 3 here). I also suggested that iKarma, who’s in this space, make changes to their product to address this larger market. But until now, no one came at this problem head-on.
Enter Rapleaf, a new San Francisco-based service created by Auren Hoffman and Manish Shah that is a fully open version of eBay’s feedback system. It’s in private beta, but will be launching to the public on May 7, 2006.
Rapleaf will allow anyone to leave feedback for anyone they’ve transacted with. Others can use this feedback to help them determine if they are doing business with someone who’d likely to engage in fraud. Rapleaf is eBay feedback for the rest of the web, and the offline world.
There are three important things to understand about Rapleaf - the interface and basic feature set, fraud prevention and detection, and their API set and related policies.
Interface and Features
Rapleaf allows any user to leave feedback for anyone (whether they are a user or not), based on a unique email address or phone number. Type that identifier into the search bar. If no results occur, you can be the first to leave feedback for that person. This can be someone you’ve bought or sold with, or just a friend that you want to endorse. Like eBay, a free-text area is included for comments in addition to a positive/neutral/negative rating.
A person’s feedback rating is a raw score, with a point added for a positive review and a point subtracted for a negative review (just like eBay). Non-transaction endorsements are calculated and shown separately. Various stats are calculated and displayed based on feedback ratings by others (see screen shot below).
Fraud Prevention and Detection
eBay knows when two people have transacted. That removes a lot of fraud issues (although a big issues on eBay has been users selling thousands of low priced items to jack up their feedback and then engaging in fraud with high ticket items). Rapleaf won’t have this luxury, and so they are focused on preventing and detecting fraud in their system.
First, any feedback left of a user can be challenged. At first this will be handled by Rapleaf employees. Later, they will probably use a third party to handle disputes.
Rapleaf will also employ human and machine based analysis of all feedback to look for patterns that suggest fraud, particularly in boosting a feedback rating. A user can probably get a an extra point or two every few months without being detected. But co-founder Auren Hoffman tells me he’s confident that they will be able to detect any large scale fraud attempts and shut the offending account(s) down.
He won’t disclose his trade secrets, of course, and so I have no way of telling if he’s right. But if they’ve nailed this issue, the biggest one facing them, then they’ll have gone a long way to achieving success.
Open, Open, Open APIs
Rapleaf will (on launch) deploy an API to allow third parties to access the key parts of the service. Account creation, review creation and feedback scores will all be accessible, and free, to third parties who choose to integrate. For non-eBay shopping sites, Rapleaf will be a competitive leveler. And if enough sites start to integrate with Rapleaf over time, the data will become even more relevant than eBay’s.
Final Thoughts
If Rapleaf succeeds in their plans, it will make the Internet a better place to do business. And Rapleaf won’t be limited to online transactions - there is no reason that transactions occuring offline can’t be measured by Rapleaf as well. The fact that an identifier can also be a phone number tells me that Rapleaf is already thinking this way.
Business development will be an important area for Rapleaf to nail. Their APIs will spur countless mashups without a direct business deal. But I also expect to see some big retailers, classified sites and shopping engines integrate with Rapleaf over time. That will require a good business development team to search out and close those deals.
Additional Screen Shots:
Hope this helps some of you out. BTW, I'll post the code you can use in the forums to get the icon similar to my sig a bit later.
http://www.rapleaf.com
-00
Senior Member
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 2,764
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From: South Korea where u car from fool
Vehicle: 2008/Hyundai/Tiburon gt
signed up....
offtopic.gif i think this would help me out alot in many ways so i can get better at this online thing i got going for RDT as the parts man... i just want people to know i do what i do because i want to, i do it on my free time hunting aroung korea for everyone that and i just want to help everyone out because i have seen what you must go through to get you KDM running and up to speed..
the only thing i can see where i would have a problem is the shipping factor. this is how the mitlary works you want your stuff express and you pay for it well i go to the post office on monday to ship out well the truck does not leave till friday so it sits in the post office for a week.. of course i could ship it fedex but do you want to pay $600 in shipping? the best i can do is 1st or 2 class mail that is accually faster then express mail... but i have absoultly no control over the mail once it leaves my hands... the resion i said all of this is that i have been concorned about my rep here on rd.... i am here for you and to help you the best i can
"if i am f***ing up Please tell me brother's "
offtopic.gif i think this would help me out alot in many ways so i can get better at this online thing i got going for RDT as the parts man... i just want people to know i do what i do because i want to, i do it on my free time hunting aroung korea for everyone that and i just want to help everyone out because i have seen what you must go through to get you KDM running and up to speed..
the only thing i can see where i would have a problem is the shipping factor. this is how the mitlary works you want your stuff express and you pay for it well i go to the post office on monday to ship out well the truck does not leave till friday so it sits in the post office for a week.. of course i could ship it fedex but do you want to pay $600 in shipping? the best i can do is 1st or 2 class mail that is accually faster then express mail... but i have absoultly no control over the mail once it leaves my hands... the resion i said all of this is that i have been concorned about my rep here on rd.... i am here for you and to help you the best i can
"if i am f***ing up Please tell me brother's "
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 34,642
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From: Los Lunas, New Mexico, USA.
Vehicle: 2001 Hyundai Tiburon, 2004 Kia Sorento, 2010 Kia Soul
Yeah, neat, but I won't be using it. I buy most of the stuff I need off of ebay, and their system works well enough. We'd have to get folks here to sign up, and for someone that might screw you over, hell, what do they care? There is no reprecussions if they get bad feedback. Their account gets deleted? Oh well. They still have my money.
We are looking into something we can put into the site, but I haven't had time to look again recently. The issue IS, we have no one to install it. Supercow has about no time for the site anymore, and we have several other things to fix and replace in the meantime.
We are looking into something we can put into the site, but I haven't had time to look again recently. The issue IS, we have no one to install it. Supercow has about no time for the site anymore, and we have several other things to fix and replace in the meantime.
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Joined: Aug 2006
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Vehicle: 2000 Hyundai Tiburon
redz ur missing the point though. 1) u dont need to sign up to have a rating. Meaning bad sellers can be given feedback even without an account.... just by using email addresses.
2) people can reenforce their GOOD selling feedback.
i dunno, maybe its just me. but ill be using this site a lot more... and dont forget, you might have a rating and not have signed up. meaning you could just search the site via the selling email or phone number and bang, know if its good or bad.
anyways, i dont really wanna get all pushy on it and im not going to. I just wanted you guys to know about it, since it seems like an awesome system to me.
2) people can reenforce their GOOD selling feedback.
i dunno, maybe its just me. but ill be using this site a lot more... and dont forget, you might have a rating and not have signed up. meaning you could just search the site via the selling email or phone number and bang, know if its good or bad.
anyways, i dont really wanna get all pushy on it and im not going to. I just wanted you guys to know about it, since it seems like an awesome system to me.
Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 34,642
Likes: 0
From: Los Lunas, New Mexico, USA.
Vehicle: 2001 Hyundai Tiburon, 2004 Kia Sorento, 2010 Kia Soul
That's even worse doode. Great, I'll go sign up and leave a bad feedback for someone's email account. Anyone. How does that prove that there was ever actually a transaction?
Best of luck, but with no integration to prove there's even been a transaction, there will be plenty of the Ebay Syndrome known as "Payback Feedback".
At least our old system here required you to link to the thread that contained the deal or transaction, and folks could see the issues or problems that arised in the process. Ebays system is allright, but there are issues. I sometimes don't leave any feedback because if I leave a negative for someone ripping me off in S/H, I'll get one back. The system you suggest doesn't link to any payment system that I see, or any selling software that I see, so anyone could go in there and fraudulently post feedback on anyone. Even WITHOUT an account. Even if they only do it once or twice a month, and that's all they can get away with, it's enough.
Best of luck, but with no integration to prove there's even been a transaction, there will be plenty of the Ebay Syndrome known as "Payback Feedback".
At least our old system here required you to link to the thread that contained the deal or transaction, and folks could see the issues or problems that arised in the process. Ebays system is allright, but there are issues. I sometimes don't leave any feedback because if I leave a negative for someone ripping me off in S/H, I'll get one back. The system you suggest doesn't link to any payment system that I see, or any selling software that I see, so anyone could go in there and fraudulently post feedback on anyone. Even WITHOUT an account. Even if they only do it once or twice a month, and that's all they can get away with, it's enough.