Pays for writing opinions, Make friends, Increase writing ability
Disadvantages:
Absuers allowed, Admin charges, Bugs, No new products, Over - rating
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
This is an update to my 'original, updated' opinion (which can still be read as I've left it pretty much intact at the end). It was originally posted on 05.07.2001 and updated on 22.11.2001. It was updated again at the end of last year on 28.12.2004 and I've added a further update to reflect the recent changes around the site. Hopefully it should give you a glimpse into the rise and fall (and rise again) of Dooyoo.
**************************** ** The Newest Update ** ****************************
Dooyoo was recently given a makeover and a minor facelift. Many technical issues were fixed with the rest being addressed currently. The new site administrator, Sebastian, has been like a breath of fresh air providing constant feedback, asking for ideas and importantly, being seen to deal with issues.
Before the re-launch, Dooyoo UK looked as if it was on its last legs. Many people were dumping their opinions on Dooyoo to take advantage of the higher pay rates and be guaranteed around twenty member reads per opinion (at 3p per read) plus the bonus of a Crown (£1.50). Abuse was rife, no new products were being added and customer service was practically nil.
Since the re-launch, the site has become a lot busier again. The die hard Dooyoo supporters have been joined by seasoned Ciao members and new members and created a better atmosphere around the site. Technically, site navigation speed has increased and many people are reporting that problems that had troubled them previously are no longer an issue. Email alerts have been re-introduced and are currently working better than they used to (with the addition of clickable links within the emails a la Ciao) and Dooyoo's becoming a pleasure to use again.
Most importantly, Sebastian is interested in looking to improve the site. He's currently very active on the Dooyoo-related satellite sites such as Tooyoo (http://www.crosswordcheats.com/tooyoo/index.php) and Opinionators (http://www.opinionators.co.uk/mainboard/index.php) where he has been getting feedback from members who have been very forthcoming about offering ideas and asking questions. For example, guest books are going to make an appearance on Dooyoo at some point in the near future in order to get members to interact directly with each other (though I think this is an interim measure until a superior Private Messaging system can be implemented) as a result of suggestions and feedback from Dooyoo members. The payout structure has also been re-jigged. Sadly, the cash payout level remains the same at a £50 minimum (plus a £5 admin charge), but admin charges have been scrapped for vouchers (only Amazon UK now, no SendIt) and the payout threshold has been reduced to £10 and in increments of 5,000 miles (£10, £15, £20 etc.) which is a much better system than before.
I'm also led to believe that Sebastian is interacting fully with a full set of Guides. Hopefully that means that the Guides will step forward again and be seen around the site to be positive role models for all members (I thought they were pretty ineffective under the last administrator, often doing what they pleased). I think the role of the Guides is pretty important, especially going forward. Guides can help members without having to trouble Sebastian who can get on with the day-to-day running of the site.
There are still issues with Dooyoo. I still think the shrunken navigation is pants compared to the more natural system on Ciao, though I can't see it being changed anytime soon. There aren't any new products being added to Dooyoo until the new system is in place which is estimated to be around the end of August 2005, although there is a system in place on Opinionators to centralise and streamline product suggestions until then. People are still posting and running, even with the increased amount of traffic around the site, it's still annoying to see people (experienced review writers) grab as much as they can without giving anything back.
I'm also still not convinced that the dooyooteam email address is up and running as I've sent several emails over the past few weeks and heard nothing back from Dooyoo in the way of feedback or acknowledgement, but Sebastian has been providing public feedback on the sites I've mentioned above. I appreciate that not everyone is a member of either site, so responding to email sent to the dooyooteam address is a priority, in my opinion.
We're only about five or six weeks into this new Dooyoo regime and the long term future is still uncertain. Sebastian's continued effort, coupled with the feedback from members is still injecting a fair amount of optimism into the site. Little fixes and changes are being made to the site continually and this has a snowball effect in that members feel that their suggestions are at least being given proper consideration and used if they are useful, with an explanation if they are not.
Dooyoo seems to be growing in popularity again with each day and if Sebastian can keep up the good work (and there's no reason to believe otherwise), then once the products suggestions form comes online, it will become more popular again.
************************ ** The First Update ** ************************
Dooyoo is an opinion writing site, much like Ciao. Members join, write opinions and rate around the site according to helpfulness, just like here on Ciao.
Where Ciao and Dooyoo differ slightly is down to two main points: the "community" and the payments. While the community is pushed forward here on Ciao (mostly by members who are mistaken about the purpose of this site), it's not really something which features on Dooyoo. Depending on your point of view, this can be a good or a bad thing. My point of view regarding the so-called community here on Ciao i.e. that it ruins Ciao as a consumer resource, means that I regard the perceived lack of community on Dooyoo as a good thing. That's not to say that there isn't any personal interaction, because there is, it's just that it's not forced down your throat as it is here on Ciao. Back in the day, Dooyoo had meets just like Ciao, which just goes to show that a 'community' is possible without all this Community Point and Café malarkey.
The payment is also slightly different. The payment rate is constant across all categories at 30 dooyooMILES (3 pence) per read, rather than the staggered system here on Ciao. Rewards are also different in that a rewarded opinion is given a "Crown" and a reward of 1500 dooyooMILES (£1.50). All rewarded opinions are given the same "Crown" symbol and the same payment which is again different to the tiered system of the mysterious Premium Fund. As long as opinions contain relevant and accurate information, the age of the opinion is irrelevant, so opinions can be Crowned irrespective of age.
When cashing out, you need at least 22500 miles to claim a £20 e-voucher for Amazon or Send It (2500 miles as an "admin charge"). Essentially e-vouchers are distributed in denominations of £20 with a one-off £2.50 admin charge each time. If you want a cheque, then you need at least 55000 miles or anything over £50 worth plus an admin charge of £5 (until you get to £100 then it's 'free'). I've never had problems with cashing out, but recently some people have been complaining that their requests have gone ignored. I think the admin charges are pants, frankly, but the overall payment and reward scheme knocks the socks off Ciao.
Unlike Ciao, Dooyoo doesn't have a free for all area like the Café. Dooyoo does have an area called "Speaker's Corner" where specific subjects can be discussed. This used to be an interesting and busy part of the site, but Dooyoo have essentially stopped supporting it at this point. You can still post to the existing categories, but no new ones have been added and people use SC as a dumping ground for opinions haven't got a specific category. At the very least, Dooyoo is pretty much devoid of the horrendous challenges and creative writing that some members insist in inflicting upon Ciao.
That, sadly, is where all the positive aspects of Dooyoo end right now. The site is an inch away from being dead, in my opinion. There's little traffic on it, there are rarely items added to the database (more on this in a little bit), the members who Guide (Dooyoo's version of Cat Assistants) do so without any coherent instructions and are often abused by members without backup from Dooyoo themselves and the one staff member who deals with Dooyoo UK, Nathalie, only works part-time and takes ages to respond if you have to contact Dooyoo.
Technically, Dooyoo is a mess. While some people can browse the site quite quickly, others take an age to log in (almost a minute, even with broadband). Even those who manage to log in often find the site slow (it's by far the slowest web site I use) and for those even trying to read or rate around the site, it can be an almost impossible task.
In referring back to the lack of traffic around the site, it's sad to see people trying to justify their over-rating of opinions. My theory is that they're simply trying to earn enough money to cash out before Dooyoo goes under, but with the lack of traffic, the over-rating has become a real issue I think, which means it's even worse over there than it was here at Ciao a year or so ago. A recent trend has seen some Ciao members cross-posting onto Dooyoo, but rather than taking part in the site 'properly', they are sadly just 'dumping and running'.
Dooyoo had a minor re-launch during September, but it's hard to see where the real work has been put in. The search engine (previously unusable) now works, display bugs which caused some characters to appear as question marks have gone and the weird bug where the first 1000 characters of each opinion appeared as lower case letters has disappeared, but that's really about it. None of the other usability issues were fixed and in fact, with their change to the font and size of the review text, it's become so much more difficult to read opinions! Dooyoo should be taking a leaf from Ciao's book who generally make semi-regular improvements to their site on an ongoing basis rather than creating a huge mess every few years.
The database is a complete mess, too. With the infrequent addition of new products (often from external databases, rather than member's requests), members have taken it upon themselves to post wherever they please, often without any action from Dooyoo or from the Guides. While this shouldn't matter if people only read one single opinion/review of a product and have come to the site via a search engine placement, it will be an issue if consumers decide to read a variety of reviews on the same subject. The members, sadly, don't see this as an area of responsibility that they have to undertake and I feel that the issue is getting out of hand both from Dooyoo's seeming indifference to the problem and from the members' greed and impatience in waiting for a correct category to be added.
With no new items being added to the database, Dooyoo is rapidly becoming stale. On average, this year, I've been waiting around 3 months for a suggestion to be added to the database. Some categories are faster than others for additions (PC Games seems to get stuff added faster than, say, Computers), but Dooyoo have along way to go to rival Ciao where, over the past few weeks, I've had items added within 90 minutes.
Abuse has started rearing its ugly head on Dooyoo over the past 12 months, too. Offhand, I can think of perhaps four or five major incidents of abuse, but have spotted lots more minor issues ongoing throughout the year. I'm not entirely sure what the score is with Dooyoo on this. I'd like to believe that it was because Nathalie doesn't have the time to deal with this anymore, but I've noticed that Dooyoo in general seemed to be trying to distance themselves from their members before Nathalie took up her role at Dooyoo HQ. In the past, there were 'faces' to deal with when problems arose - firstly JP, the lovely Jo Starr and then Katie. Now, despite the fact that Nathalie is the public face, Dooyoo just seems soulless. There's an atmosphere over at Dooyoo that's never really been there before, and it's putting me off using the site. In fact, given the current climate where the Guides don't seem to be doing much regarding the abuse and Dooyoo's lack of interest in the same, it's getting to the point where I'm asking myself why I should follow the rules set down. If members who have been reported for racist behaviour and for abusing Dooyoo's Guides are allowed to remain on the site because "they are popular", I can only assume that Dooyoo are more concerned with page hits than their members. That's definitely not a good message to be sending out.
Overall, taking a look at the site logically, I can see no reason to join up to the site at this current time and I'm having hard time coming up with reasons why anyone would want to continue their membership. I've got a while to go before I can cash out my dooyooMILES but unless there's a serious change in atmosphere around the site (because that is a far worse problem than the technical failings) then I shall be seriously considering further participation on Dooyoo.
Considering my glowing report below, I think it's easy to see that Dooyoo has really screwed up over the past few years which is a shame because, in my opinion, it was the best UK-based opinion site for a long time (until September 2002) when things went horribly wrong, and they've never managed (or attempted, some might say) to get back to where they were. The resources for getting things done were there - back in the day, Dooyoo members could be relied upon to help out the (friendly) team if necessary, making suggestions, reporting bugs, helping other members etc. but two years of being pretty much ignored have seen the pro-active, helpful people leave to come here more regularly or even stop opinionating totally.
***************************** ** The Original Opinion ** *****************************
Now, I assume that most people that are reading or writing on this site have heard of dooyoo.co.uk. It's an opinion-writing site, somewhat similar to Ciao - at least in concept. I've been a member there since August of last year, although I only started writing seriously around Christmas/New Year period. To go into the ins and outs of the site would take me all year to write and you all month to read, so I'll point out the bits I think are important.
** Payment for writing **
Dooyoo used to pay 10p per opinion written (provided it passes certain basic standards), but cutbacks across the whole IT/Internet community has meant that these have been scrapped. But, you get 3p per read by another Dooyoo member. A "crowned" opinion will get the author a further £1.50 added to their balance, although these usually have to be pretty special. Dooyoo uses "dooyooMILES" which I assume is to try and not push forward the idea of writing for money i.e. cutting down on churners. 1000 dooyooMILES = £1. Unlike Ciao, all opinions at Dooyoo are paid for being read by member, and not just a special 10% (21,000 odd categories out of 200,000 plus in total).
If you invite a friend to Dooyoo who signs up, you get 100 miles for each of the first 10 opinions that person writes.
WARNING: You must be over 18 years of age to cash in your miles!
** Cashing in **
Your Dooyoo miles can be converted into cash, e-vouchers, charitable donations or Dooyoo t-shirts.
If you want cash, you must have at least 50,000 miles (£50) to get cash.
To get online vouchers (also called e-vouchers), you must have at least 10,000 miles, and after that you can claim in increments of 5,000 miles.
Charitable donations start at the 5,000 mile point.
T-shirts (and other merchandise available soon) cost 10,000 miles, which you don't even have to convert to cash! This is simply subtracted from your balance.
Dooyoo have also since introduced admin charges which are £2.50 for vouchers, and £5 for cheques under £100. This is due to a seeming ploy by Dooyoo to try and persuade everyone to cash in their miles via ipoints, although both Amazon and Blackstar vouchers remain. From what I can tell, this (the ipoints thing) seems to be a fairly unpopular move.
** Opinions **
The minimum word count on Dooyoo is 75 words. Opinions, like here on Ciao, can be written on almost any subject. If the topic you wish to review is not available, a simple form posts your request off to be posted on site within a few days, although sometimes this may take longer. In my humble opinion, Dooyoo opinions, by and large, are probably more extreme than those on Ciao. What I mean is that the better ones are better, but the poorer ones are poorer with an average opinion probably being similar in quality on both sites.
If you want to add a new item, or category to dooyoo, it is simply a matter of clicking on a link, and supplying some information (type of item, manufacturer, web site details etc.) and depending on the category (some are busier than others) you can then expect to see a new item on site within a few days. Unlike ciao, you don't have to have an opinion already written, in fact you can use the few days to write your opinion while you are waiting.
** Profile **
Dooyoo gives you a profile, in a similar way to Ciao to use as an information base. On your Dooyoo profile, you can keep an eye on your balance, see who has been reading your opinions, list your most recent opinions/updates etc. You can also provide some information about yourself to give an idea of your likes and dislikes as well as other points you think other people might find interesting. All this information is all on one page for easy access, so you can get a good idea of your account's "health" quickly.
** Keeping up to date with your opinions **
Both Ciao and Dooyoo are able to send email updates regarding your opinions. On Ciao, this seems to be limited to sending one out every time a comment is left on one of your opinions, which can be a huge pain in the arse. On Dooyoo, you have to enable this manually for every opinion you write, but if you do it right, then your email update (sent daily during the middle of the night) will contain information like who has rated your opinions (and how!), who has left comments and who in your Circle of Friends (CoT to you Ciao people) has written new opinions. If Ciao offer a more advanced option like this, please let me know.
** Design and Navigation and other related stuff **
A few months ago, Dooyoo underwent a recent design update. Before that, their site looked remarkably like Ciao, only green and black rather than orange and blue. Now, it's more colourful and in nicer shades of blue, yellow and green. At first, I found the update to be more cluttered i.e. too much information, but I've gotten used to it, and find it to be a lot better all round. I personally find it far easier to find what I want on Dooyoo rather than Ciao. Now, Ciao seem to be making moves to becoming more like Dooyoo in appearance. Whether this is a good thing remains to be seen because surely both sites need their own unique image?
I also use my browsers "Back" button quite a lot when browsing both sites. Dooyoo individually name their pages, making it easier to pick out an individual page in a list, whereas Ciao's are all named in batches and a page called "ciao.com - Dooyoo.co.uk" could be any number of previously browsed pages in that category.
Site speed is generally the same (at least if there's a difference, I can't see it!)
** Community Spirit **
A lot of opinions here on Ciao keep mentioning Community Spirit, and while not essentially a part of the site, I'll comment on it. Again, I think Dooyoo's is brilliant! (Fast Show impersonation not intended). There are unofficial message boards where members can chat about all sorts of things Dooyoo related or not, as well as arrange meetings etc. The one I'm a member of (OpCom) is very friendly with a chat room where there's usually some larking around going on. Details of the Dooyoo message boards are plastered in comments all over the site for people to find, but I've rarely seen any such thing on Ciao, and even then it's only hinted at. As far as commenting on opinions etc. is concerned, both sites are on a par with each other. I've not noticed any real differences in either site, for reasons stated below.
** The All Important Customer Service **
In my mind, Dooyoo wins hands down, by a country mile, in a landslide victory. Why am I being so enthusiastic? Well, I've been a Ciao member for a few months now, and for the first 3 weeks of my membership I was unable to sign in. I could still read opinions, but any of you who had the benefit of a read from me during that period haven't had your 2p. Obviously, seeing as this is posted, I have gotten back on, but this only happened on Wed 4th July. I still haven't heard from Ciao on this matter which, after 3 weeks, was totally unacceptable. By and large, Dooyoo at least reply to your emails within a few days, and any problems are ironed out shortly thereafter. Regarding abusers both towards both the site and other members, Dooyoo act immediately or at least within 24 hours. You always get feedback unlike my experiences of Ciao. When reporting things to Ciao recently, I've had to email at least twice in order to get a response, and even then, not to my satisfaction.
** Other members **
No real winners here, as both sites seem to share loads of members. Obviously, some favour one site over the other (usually whatever site they started on, they prefer), but as both sites share lots of the same members, no-one is better than the other. This would go along to explain similarities in things like decent rating and commenting on both sites.
** Misc **
Recently, Dooyoo have moved part of their system to Madrid where they are centralising their customer service sections. Unfortunately, this resulted in some delays in adding content to the site, but everything seems to be back to normal with crowns being given out, content added etc. all quite quickly. [Dooyoo operations now based in Germany.]
** In Conclusion **
I have to say that I prefer Dooyoo rather than Ciao. Primarily this is to do with familiarity, but also a lot has to do with the inability to log in without at least some sort of contact from Ciao. I am of the understanding that Ciao has recently closed it's UK operation due to restructuring which may be to blame, but this does not excuse a 3 week period of silence, and other people were able to log on and post during this period, so why not me?
More details
Security & Privacy Statement
Good
Customer Service Support
Satisfactory
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