In the midst of countless reviews sites ranging from Yelp and Judy’s Book, to All Consuming and RateItAll, comes The Best Stuff in the World, a mega-reviews site that lets users pontificate on what the best stuff in the world is. So, does TBSW have a chance in this already crowded space? I think it does.

The key to TBSW is that it focuses on the “best.” Even though many of the other sites do focus on the rankings and dividing the wheat from the chaff, TBSW has the advantage that they’re only focused on the absolute wheatiest. This focus permeates all parts of the site, where the phrase “The Best XXX” is used liberally, and as a precursor (and postcursor) to almost all statements. For anyone who is too impatient to wade through multiple reviews, TBSW could be a shortcut to simple find what people think are the best in each category.

As a reviews and ranking site, TBSW’s implementation is simple and well-thought out–no suprises here. You can view each item, see other user’s comments, propose a “best” item, propose new categories for items, add images, bookmark them, and see who else likes the item. What’s interesting is that since items can be categorized into multiple categories, you can surf through from item to item, looking at what’s better. For example, Wikipedia may be ranked as a better website than Flickr, but Flickr may be ranked as a better Web 2.0 website than Wikipedia. I think that after a while, the six degrees of separation rule would come into effect, allowing me to surf from Flickr to Chanel Sunglasses by finding things that are better. It could potentially be an interesting way to surf related items that are naturally connected via categories.

Of course, just like any other social reviews site, there is the possibility of gaming the system to artificially inflate items. Right now, there appears to be no captcha or any human authentication involved in submission, so bots could easily be used to attack the service. However, there appears to not be any misbehavior so far (besides the usual silliness like saying “Anything” is the best in the world), and there also seems to be quite a few members that are already addicted to submitting their best items.

Again, TBSW has the advantage of simplicity in the complex world of reviews and ranking sites. If they keep the user influx up, their site could be a good resource for novices to find the best in any category.

This entry was posted by James Yu on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 1:15 pm and is filed under The Best Stuff in the World, Reviews, Rankings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.