Revyr - Company Reviews By You!

Revyr is a company review service where anyone can post data about companies anonymously. The startup is in private beta testing and I tested some of its elements today. Revyr is patterned after product review sites but the reviews come from the public at large, employees and former employees. Anyone can post a review on a company (without fear of discovery) by filling in various text and form fields. This user submitted data is collected to provide feedback for those interested in a particular company.

Features

Quite a bit of data can be entered into the Revyr database from a personal experiences - to pay, tenure, commute time and other information. There are also some cool rating scale bars including: autonomy, advancement, job security, development, pay, CSR, culture, benefits, management and work/life balance. The cumulative effect of written review, environmental ratings and forms provide a fairly detailed and fast system for evaluating a company.

The Revyr UI is simple and enjoyable and auto complete function makes the interface fairly intuitive. The database of over 5 million jobs and correlative reviews from past employees/users enables some fascinating real time metrics for users as well. Revyr uses an advanced algorithm to compare companies based on the in-depth ratings. Another cool "Alexa" type function allows users to compare up to 5 companies across the rating matrix. Searching rounds out the Revyr's most usable tools and enables potential employees to evaluate employers based on this spectrum of attributes and reviews.

A surpise that did not work - RWW and other blog reviews that would not post

A super cool job search element - note the rating filter slider left

Revyr In Practice

Revyr evidently had some problems while I was testing because not much worked right except the feedback pulldown and the great job search aspect above. Kristen Nicole of Mashable pointed out that Revyr is subject to tampering and thus skewed data. This is very true given the current variables, but I used the handy feedback frame to suggest that the algorithm be scaled according to the reviewer's association and potential knowledge of the particular companies. I think this could be incorporated with a few more questions to some extent, but I guess proof of association would be necessary in order to validate these issues completely. Without some transparency and credible safeguards it will be difficult for Revyr to be more than a toy in my view. The value is right there though, and perhaps some form of human filtering can be employed to address this?

Conclusion

Revyr is a fantastic concept with Web 2.0 refined tools! We all expect bugs in a brand new beta, and Revyr is no exception as of my testing. No matter how frustrating this was for me, most of the bugs are simple fixes no doubt. The simple and intuitive interface combined with a searchable data base will make it fun and easy to rate companies or find jobs. We all like simple, fast tools that add value and Revyr fits the bill in many regards. In the end however, the development has a huge credibility and subsequent value obstacle to hurdle. I like the idea and the way Revyr is approaching this narrow niche. I would like to test the service again once some bugs are out and the database is more developed.