Edge Of Network Reviews – KritX

KritX is very raw, but they are on to something big – aggregation of reviews from blogs (the edge of the network). I wrote in a recent post (no. 9) that I’d like to see someting like this be built. Don’t look so much at the current execution of Kritx and judge them too quickly – think about the idea that they are trying to exploit.

There are millions of passionate user reviews on blogs today of everything you can think of – movies, music, books, resaurants, etc. Just do a technorati search for “review” and whatever you are looking for.

Of course, initiatives to better organize blog data, like structured blogging and microformats, will make this data even easier to index and present to users.

kritX is combinging blog reviews and microformats with a vertical search engine to present these edge reviews to users. It has a long way to go. Authors must use microformats and tell kritX that they want their posts included (neither of these things are really necessary). But it is a good idea that can grow into something incredible. All the data is just sitting out there on the open internet, ready to be harvested.

See also Blogcritics, who do something similar (although they do not require microformats, they do require author registration at the site). The plethora of ads on Blogcritics do get in the way of the user experience, though.