pownum

Here's another site with a silly name, this time offering people the opportunity to rate and review organizations and allowing those organizations a right of reply. Reviewers earn militaristic awards for their various activities, from Corporal up to Five-Star General. Meh. Before long there's going to be a review site where members of the public rate each other's reviews, for want of anything left that hasn't already been reviewed by members of the public. The web allows ordinary people to complain about (and occasionally praise) companies and organizations and stores and restaurants and websites and products in a way they've never been able to do before. I get that. It's just not innovative any more, though, and seeing another site adding to the already burgeoning customer report and review arena no longer excites me. Sorry, guys, but this is *so* last year. The trouble is, though, I look mean now because this particular site has figured out a gimmick -- it collects donations from organizations that take part, and gives them to charities. So to say I'm not impressed and probably won't come back for a while, makes me look like a cheapskate. So either I'm a cheapskate anyway, or it's a very clever gimmick. I have mixed feelings; it's great to raise donations for charities, but on the other hand I think if an organization wants to donate to a worthwhile cause or two, it should just go ahead and do that without trying to get cheap publicity out of it. On the other hand, I could do some reports on this one and get to be "Colonel Chris". I don't get that kind of appreciation at SiteJabber:-P