Interview
The Ciao websites have two main offerings for users: a comparison shopping portal and a consumer community. Could you talk about how these two aspects of Ciao feed each other?
In the beginning, Ciao was founded as a pure opinion portal. The idea was that everyone could help each other and give advice by writing consumer reviews. From that existing structure, a detailed product catalogue evolved. Around 2001, it became clear that a pure community model would not be profitable, and so we added the price comparison component. There were two reasons for doing so. First, it was a way to bring in revenue. And second, it was a service that people already expected; someone searching for a product on Ciao would also naturally want to find the ...
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