The CoolHotNot Community Manifesto

The CoolHotNot Community Manifesto

There is a force gathering power among us – a force that speaks with the power of authentic human experience. The momentum will disrupt the status quo in how we gather information of value about what to buy and what to give.

Why Not?

We are compelled to ask – in this age of the wonders of the Web – WHY are we NOT yet able to get reliable search results that convey our trusted individual and collective human experience with the things we buy and recommend, or things we wish to give, or warn our friends to shun?

Promise Unfulfilled

The advent of the Web brought us hope in the promise of a multitude of new ways of sharing, new ways of learning, and new ways of experiencing life and its many possibilities. Yet we still wrestle with vexing questions about which products are best to buy for ourselves and others.

More Information We Trust Less

Although the Web may have brought us lower prices and more buying choices, it has also brought us even more of the information we trust less than the social networks it has enabled.

The Elusive Quest for Quality

We face as much intrusive advertising, hype, sham, and noise as ever before.

We have tolerated the endless annoyance of advertising only because our tolerance has afforded us free information and entertainment.

We have learned to endure the constant din of “the voices that ring false” because the authentic voices of real-life experience are so infrequent and faint.

We too often witness the veiled disappointment in loved ones’ eyes when our gifts fall short because our desire to surprise them leaves us guessing in the dark.

We have suffered too dearly the incessant loss of time and money arising from the misguided purchases we make in the absence of quality recommendations and gift ideas from people we trust.

THIS Is Our Response

We have decided to take our destiny in our own hands by sharing our consumer experience and desires with others.

We trust in the wisdom of crowds and the power of community.

We will develop and deploy fun and rewarding ways of sharing information about our personal experience with products.

A Social Transformation of Product Search

Henceforth we will seek to make our purchasing decisions based on these high-trust forms of product-related information.

We will thereby reduce the incentive for vendors to provide us with low-trust advertising and other manipulative forms of marketing.

We will transform the nature of buying and selling so that neither buyers nor sellers in our global trust-based community need beware.

Our Vision

We foresee a world where:

• Search engines yield product recommendations from our friends and trusted experts.
• Advertising is obsolete and replaced by the sponsored endorsements of people we trust.
• Gift ideas are based on what our loved ones have added to their Wish Lists
• Product returns are minimized by higher quality crowd-sourced information about What’s Best and What’s Worst
• The creators of quality innovations are quickly encouraged or corrected by the crowd-sourced shared experiences of first-hand users.

Therefore, As Free Agents of Change In Our Own Favor, WE DECLARE:

Our bold intention is to create a community that facilitates the sharing of trustworthy information about products.

We will share lists of products that:

• We personally use and like – to serve as recommendations for others in the community.
• We want but don’t yet have – to serve as gift ideas and enable the exploration of things that are seen as new and exciting.
• We tried but found disappointing – to serve as “low-quality” alerts and to fully inform the recommendations shared by others.

The Transformation We’ll Drive

Thus will we empower the producers of quality ideas, goods, and services.Thus will we discover what’s best through our shared experiences and elude the purveyors of hype.Thus will we forge productive partnerships with those who provide us with quality innovations.Thus will we seize our economic destiny.

 We Are The CoolHotNot Community.

Who Are We?
We are consumers who want more trustworthy product information, such as recommendations from friends.
We are the creators of quality products who want more trusted ways of reaching those who want what we have.
We call ourselves The CoolHotNot Community.
May we join your voice with ours?

Yes! Show me how.

Signed,

Dave Whittle

Theo Mandel, PhD

Steve Bass

Jeffrey Kahn

Stevenson Smith

Eric Vernon

Allen Stalvey

Bob Angell

Leigh Anne Varney

Mar Anthony Go

Jason Fleming

Ricardo Guerrero

Paul Baltes

Stuart Fullinwider

Dave Gerber

Robert Vance

William “Buddy” Cobb

Jared Whittle

Nicia Esplin

and 14 more