What’s that? It is orange and everywhere creep around green, blue, red and violet dots between a heap of letters? Right: The ciao community. And what happened if they don’t talk about Cadbury’s chocolate, Durex Extrasafe or Pringles Crisps but about Jobst Joghurt, fromage allégé, pasta fresca or paella rapida? Then you are stranded on one of the 4 other ciao platforms. That can happen quite easily because at the bottom of each page of every ciao platform you can find links to the other European platforms. That’s how I came to Ciao UK…one inattentive moment and your community had a new member ;o)
Thus, we are not alone and also in other European countries the ciao communities enjoy increasing popularity. Whether ‘The voice of the consumer’, ‘Wissen, was gut ist’ or ‘Consigli da Amici’ – everywhere, consumers write for consumers and share their experiences. A lot of things are identical on all pages (apart from the language, of course ;o) ) – the design, the registration, writing and rating opinions.
---------------------------------------------- Community Points / Community Punkte / I Punti Ciao / Los puntos comunidad / Les points de communauté -----------------------------------------------
You get the same number of community points for writing and rating opinions, for inviting friends etc. But there is a difference concerning the community levels: whereas Italy, France and Spain have the same division as ciao UK, it is a little bit different at ciao Germany where you’re already green when you have collected 500 points. You get the blue dot with 5,000 points and if you like blue, you’re a lucky person at ciao Germany because it’s a long way to violet (20,000), red (50,000), orange (100,000), silver (500,000) or gold (1,000,000). Nevertheless, it probably doesn’t take you much longer to get to a higher community level because ciao Germany has much more members than the other ciao communities and that’s why many more people read your opinions.
----------------------------------------------- Bonus Programme / Bonusprogramm / El Programa de Bonus / Le programme de rémunération / Programma Bonus -----------------------------------------------
Accordingly, the premium fund in Germany is much larger than in the other countries (12,500 EUR). And ciao Germany still has different payments for member readings. You get 0,1,2 or 3 cent for every reading. In my opinion, the system of ciao UK – 1p per reading (or 0p in some categories) - is a much better solution (no, I’m not against earning money ;o) ) because ciao Germany has a lot of problems at the moment arising from different opinions on whether you should write just for fun or just for the money you can earn. Words like „3 cent fetishists“ or „faking of experiences“ are created for those people who just write about every product they can find and with which they can earn 3 cent – no matter if they have made any experiences with it or not. So, with the UK-system you certainly avoid a lot of disputes.
If you want to join one of the other European communities, a participation in the bonus programme is only possible with a bank account in the respective country.
--------------------------------------------------- Me, ciao Germany and ciao UK / Ich, ciao Deutschland und Ciao UK / moi, ciao Allemagne et...ok, that’s enough ;o) ---------------------------------------------------
In March 2002 I started writing for Ciao Germany and now that I have also written my first opinions for ciao UK, I have realized, that – although both platforms are quite similar and in many points almost identical – there are differences that I would like to write about.
Most of the differences arise from the fact that the German community has much more members which causes some advantages but also a lot of disadvantages. One advantage is: I am blue at ciao Germany (almost violet) ;o)
When I started writing for ciao UK, ciao Germany had some technical problems and that’s why I wasn’t the only German member who had the idea to visit your community. And the first thing I realized was that the atmosphere here seems to be quite different. Nice comments although some opinions were really difficult to understand. One of the real disadvantages of the big German community is that there are of course more new members and a lot of new opinions and – unfortunately – some members who just rate them fairly helpful without any comment or – sometimes – with a really unfriendly comment because they have already rated hundreds of opinions at the same day and it seems to go on their nerves – but they get community points for it and so they go on clicking. It’s a real pity because such a big community gives you the possibility only to read opinions about the things that you are interested in and there’s at least one new article every minute what makes the community really interesting.
That was the first positive surprise followed by the second when I posted my first opinion for ciao UK. As I have already mentioned: at Ciao Germany, there’s at least one new article every minute so that you are a lucky person if your opinion stays on the first page for a minute. But while your article is on the first page for some seconds, it is usually read 10 times or even more. More than a minute on the first page means 20, 30 or even more reads. And here, it was totally different. I was surprised that my first opinion stayed at the first page for several minutes and it has only been read 5 or 6 times. I posted it in the morning and at midday it was still among the 20 latest articles. At ciao Germany you get up to 40 reads in 10 minutes (a little less if you are not known yet and a little more if you are known of course) but then, your article is already edged out by following articles. That’s why the moment when you post your opinion usually is quite exciting because it is almost some sort of ‘game of chance’.
Usually, more people than at ciao UK read your opinions and – for being honest - after my first op for ciao UK I was a little bit disappointed about the low number of readings but the disappointment was very quickly forgotten because of so many nice comments and the apparently good atmosphere at ciao UK.
Ciao Germany doesn’t have a new member guide or something like category assistants. And we don’t have such funny things like the ‘hall of fame’ with the funniest writer or the sexiest profile photo. The UK community seems to be much more a community of the members who are involved in some decisions. The members of ciao Germany are for example not involved in the decision which opinion gets a diamond. I think that none of the members really understands the criteria that make an opinion worth a diamond. And I could never imagine reading on the German community page something like ‘A member challenged his Ciao friends to write about….’. And something like an award to honour members who have made a special contribution to building a friendly community also doesn’t exist. But we also have Ciao reunions in many cities. Unfortunately, I haven’t been there yet but next time in Hamburg I will go there meeting my ciao friends in person.
At ciao Germany, I also write for one of our two ‘group stories’. I have just seen that you also have such a story. We have the ‘agents of the platform’ with more than 30 parts until today and a saga about a little hero discovering the platform written in rhymes. We unfortunately don’t have those “10 things…..”-categories in our café… I really like reading them because they are very often ironic and just funny and they can tell me a lot about the author.
One of the things that really are on the increase at ciao Germany are – as I have already mentioned – members who just write for earning money and who search for every 3-cent-category. Every month, ciao changes the 3-cent-categories - dependent on how interested ‘non-members’ are in those products and on how many opinions already exist on those products. Theoretically, that’s a good strategy but practically, it looks like that: A group of members writes about every product they can earn 3 cent with and so you have at least 30 or 40 opinions on the same product in one week – among them strange categories like ‘member advice on shaving arm-pits’, ‘geese’ or ‘Charmin Deluxe toilet tissue’. And you probably can imagine how interesting it is to read the 10th opinion on how to kill ants in your garden – knowing that some of the members who wrote those opinions never had any problems with ants nor do they have a garden. So, the result of such a system is that you can find less opinions that contain real experiences with the described product and that’s totally against the idea of ciao.
One of the advantages of a bigger community is certainly the large choice of categories and products within those categories. But ciao UK seems to work faster than ciao Germany concerning the product suggestions (I had to wait not even a day and ciao Germany often needs several weeks).
I will go on writing for both platforms because in both communities I have met people that I like to talk to and at ciao Germany there are fortunately a lot of people that I really like and that have the same attitude towards the mentioned points. And I like the idea of helping each other and of sharing experiences in a community where you can also get to know people and in the case of ciao UK, learn a lot about different countries. In general, I love the atmosphere on both platforms and it’s up to you anyway to decide how to ‘use’ the platform and the community and to benefit from it.
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