Mass Comparative Analysis

There are several sites out there that help you to know what things are popular, starting with Google (PageRank is based on how many sites link to a page), and then Stumble, del.icio.us, and Digg. But to date I haven't seen any site that really lets people compare things side by side.

What I'm imagining is something like PC magazine's (actually, most computer mags) product comparison articles. In these articles, the authors try a number of related products, analyze the features, and then rate each product on those features. From these they produce a composite score. As a reader who is relatively ignorant of the tool being reviewed, I might decide that to investigate the tool scoring 9.7/10 overall. Meanwhile, a somewhat informed reader might decide that "indexed report speed" (I'm making up a random feature here) is the most critical feature and will opt to investigate the two products that ranked highest in that feature.

Meanwhile, over at BoardGameGeek.com, the operators have created a very impressive system for game lovers (and publishers) to add their favourite games, describe them, and break down the details. Once posted, others can add information, and can rate the games. Then they can construct lists of games (such as Alan's favourites, Very Fast 2 Player Games, Axis and Allies Variants, etc.) People can browse these lists to find games related to ones they already like.

These concepts need to be combined. Moving beyond board games, we could use a site to compare webapps. How does gmail compare to yahoo mail to hotmail? How does blogger compare to the other blog systems? What sites work well with Google Maps? The list goes on and on.

So in this hypothetical system, you enter your favourite sites. Another person adds feature lists to some of these. Someone else makes lists which puts several comparable sites side by side. Everyone rates the sites, and rates the features of the sites. People make comments and discuss the sites. Then we can all see feature list comparisons, find related sites quickly, and know in short order to which site should turn to help get moving in the direction of web-based backup, or remote access to my home computer or whatever.

If such a site got going, thousands of people would organize, catalog, describe, rank, and compare thousands of sites on the net. And millions would be able to visit for a very quick rundown of what's the best of what. Just like today they turn to PC Magazine for one comparison of 5 products, tomorrow they will turn to youcomparemillionsofproducts.com (or maybe the creators will come up with a better name) for instant comparisons of everything valuable under the sun.

You could search this database by name, tag, popularity (number of ratings), quality (avg number of stars), etc. And you will find what you want much faster than Google or Stumble could possibly achieve.

So, do you agree? Has this already been done and I missed it? If not, what will it take to get this going? Please share your opinions.

Alan