When it comes to making a purchase, reviews are solely what we depend on. For say, you want to buy a new phone... one and the only thing you do is depend on reviews of other buyers for the particular phone you want to buy. Right?

Well, these reviews are easily available on the brand's website, different social media platform or review apps like Yelp. But what if there was a website that was all about reviews, no need to check out the brand's website or refer to different websites for reviews.

Ever heard of Review Signal?

Review Signal is an honest review website for consumers, that aims at providing the most accurate and honest reviews possible by using the data consumers create. We listen to the conversations, analyze them and visualize them for consumers (for free!).

Review Signal is a Washington D.C. based start-up that captures and analyzes the information that people share on social media, determining why do people like or dislike any particular brand.

Kevin Ohashi, a former moderator of the popular Web Hosting Talk forum, is the brain behind Review Signal. It was during his Masters when he was doing a thesis on 'Sentiment Analysis' that he realized how Twitter can be used to determine customer's happiness quotient and this is how Review Signal came into being.

Review Signal is currently focusing on web hosting reviews but is soon going to expand into other product categories. Read on to know more about Review Signal in our exclusive interview with it's founder Kevin.

1. Hi Kevin, please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us about Review Signal.

My name is Kevin Ohashi, and I am the founder of Review Signal, a Washington D.C. based start-up. Review Signal is consumer review website for the social media era. Nobody ever writes a review for Review Signal, instead we capture the information people publicly share on social media. We analyze the content and context of the message to determine whether the person liked or disliked a company/brand. We also try to understand why they liked or disliked it. The simplest way to understand Review Signal is, instead of asking a few of your friends for an opinion, we've asked the whole world for their opinions. The first industry I decided to cover is web hosting reviews.


2. What inspired you to create Review Signal in the first place? Is there a story behind its creation?

 My background is in economics, computer science and marketing. My passion is exploring and understanding data. Review Signal is the culmination of many years of research and work, which I started back in graduate school in 2009. I was getting my Master's degree in International Marketing and Brand Management at Lund University in Sweden. I wrote my thesis on predicting box office sales for movies based on Twitter messages. That thesis laid the foundation for Review Signal. I was able to collect millions of opinions and actually model them according to marketing events, such as trailer releases. What was even more fascinating was looking at the effect of sentiment on how well a movie did after its premiere. That paper opened my eyes to the power and information hidden inside of seemingly mundane messages we share all day with one another. While one Tweet may be insignificant, with enough volume I was able to glean incredibly valuable insights. Review Signal is the commercial application of that idea and the technology I built to write my Master's thesis.  I chose to apply the technology to the web hosting industry first because it's one that I know intimately and I have been unhappy with the quality of the options for over a decade.




What I learned from the whole process was how to get feedback. I needed people to tell me my site was ugly and what they hated about it. Most people (eg. your friends) don't want to tell you that because of social obligations. Finding enough people to give you critical feedback is important. Another important thing to do is testing the site on real users. I spent weeks finding potential users of my site, reaching out, and getting beta testers. These were my target audience and their feedback is what mattered most.


4. Why did you choose to select Twitter as your primary source of information for the reviews? How do you encourage your readers to participate with reviews on Twitter?

Twitter was a natural choice for a couple of reasons: availability and volume. Twitter has an API that makes it very easy to collect data. It also has millions of active users which generate the content required to build Review Signal.

As far as encouraging readers to participate with reviews on Twitter, I don't do that at all. In fact, part of the beauty, in my biased opinion, of Review Signal is that it is based on conversations which happen naturally. People talk to each other all day, every day and sentiments about companies are embedded in that conversation. My job is extracting them and letting the natural conversations flow. The bigger challenge is filtering out all the spam and irrelevant messages.


5.  What measures have you taken to ensure that spammy reviews are not sent by automated accounts? How do you validate a tweet as being genuine?

Spam is something I take very seriously and it's an incredible challenge. There is no foolproof way to fight it, it's a cat and mouse game like your email inbox. Right now, for every one review you read, there is approximately 19 messages which you aren't reading. There is a lot of spam and noise in the data. Most of my time on the technology side is trying to figure out how to filter and catch it.

As for validation, users are welcome to click on any message and validate it themselves by looking at who said it, what else they have said and whatever other information they can dig up. Review Signal tries to automate a lot of ways to detect fraudulent Tweets, but it's not perfect and I won't ever be able to claim that. It uses a vast amount of data to drown out individual cheats. Many review sites have very few reviews, having a couple friends write something good or bad can significantly influence the rating. If someone tried that on Review Signal, five or even ten friends won't make a dent. There would need to be a large campaign of cheating to influence the rankings. The larger the cheating attempt, the easier it is to notice and detect. We also rely on users helping us by flagging and alerting us to fraudulent accounts and cheaters.





That's been a huge challenge. The three biggest factors right now have been PR, SEO and my lead generation tool. PR and SEO are somewhat tied together. Getting good search engine rankings is based on links, which PR helps generate. Those ranking generate a much more sustainable levels of traffic and make sure it's targeted towards the right people.

My lead generation tool is closely tied to social media. It's designed to find people and conversations where I should be involved. Is someone having trouble deciding what kind of web hosting to buy? It let's me know and I can jump into that conversation and hopefully help them. For the type of content and service I provide, I think there is a very low virality coefficient. People need reviews at a very specific moment in the buying process and I am covering an industry that you don't shop for very often. My best case scenario is someone is exposed to my site and recommends it when someone else asks. So word-of-mouth isn't very common for Review Signal. I would love for that to change, but I don't think that's a realistic expectation until I expand into some other industries that are more mainstream.


7. Could you please share your how many of your user’s have found Review Signal’s rating to be helpful and meaningful in selecting a hosting provider? What is the biggest compliment that you have received for Review Signal? 

It's hard to put a number on that. I favorite some of the happiest Tweets from our users here: https://twitter.com/reviewsignal/favorites  I've included a couple below:

"@ReviewSignal Woo, thanks, I actually looked for a hosting review site and couldn't find a decent one (yours is very simple & helpful)"

"Looking for a #good #host (#website/ #application)? Resources: 1) http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/  2) http://lifehacker.com/web-hosting/ , & 3) http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ "

"And especially thanks to @kevinohashi who pointed me to his host comparison data: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare/ … which does much of the work for you."

The biggest compliment is every time someone purchases web hosting based on the information I have compiled. It's their trust and faith in Review Signal that means the most to me.


8. On a more personal note, when you are not working on Review Signal what sort of activities do you like to pursue in your free time? What is your absolute favorite?

One of the things I enjoy most is video games. They help me unwind and it's something I've done with my best friends since we were kids. It helps us stay connected despite not living in the same cities or being at the same points in our lives anymore. I also enjoy the outdoors, paintball is my favorite  activity but I also like fishing and hiking.


9. What are the future plans for Review Signal? Do you plan to expand into other product categories?

The plan is to expand into other product categories. Domain Registration services are up next. I've also got a couple other niches that are collecting data. It's become quite a challenge to balance development efforts and marketing Review Signal. It's really easy to make bold mission statement, but it gets harder and harder as the sole employee as your scope continues to expand. I suppose the future is figuring out how and what to scale while maintaining a balance across the different things that need to get accomplished.


10. What are some of the lessons that you would like to share with aspiring start-ups to help them in getting  their ideas to fruition?

Avoid the echo chamber. Reading a lot of the popular start-up stories can exhaust you. It makes you think like everyone else and feel pressure about not quite fitting what everyone else is saying. There is no right way to do a start-up. The stories people talk about publicly are generally smoothed over and idealized to some degree. That doesn't mean disregard all the feedback and ideas you read, but it does mean you should be critical of them and try to understand how they apply to you, your goals and your start-up. Sometimes, doing the exact opposite makes the most sense. But you need to understand why that might be the case.



Thanks Kevin for doing this interview with us. We'd like to wish you and your team at Review Signal the very best for the future.

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