If I have an opinion about a product or service and decide to publish it online, where should I do so? If I have a great (or horrible) experience at a local restaurant, or feel particularly passionate about a product I've used, where should I share my opinions? Should I publish them in Amazon.com's product reviews, citysearch.com, an online forum, or this blog? Each site has a slightly different audience, but they all have audiences for reviews of products and services I've enjoyed or disliked.

What to consider when publishing a review?

1. Audience: Who will see what you've written? Does the site provide an audience who'll find your opinion valuable?

2. Reach: Does the site get any traffic?

It's nice to be read.

Due to the large number of online venues available today for publishing reviews, a person really needs to be selective about where they contribute their knowledge. What's the point in contributing a review to a site with no traffic, or a site that isn't absolutely relevant to a topic? Also, why contribute free content to commercial sites where you'll receive little to no compensation for your knowledge?

Luckily, technology appears to be coming to the rescue. Sites are working on hybrid solutions that will allow bloggers to syndicate reviews they write on their own site to other web sites. This allows bloggers to write reviews of products, restaurants and other services on their own sites then push that content onto other websites to gain more exposure For example, a blogger who likes writing restaurant reviews may primarily like writing them for his own site rather than CitySearch or Judysbook.com. JudysBook.com is now going to enable bloggers to push their reviews to Judysbook.com from their personal blogs.

Bloggers gain greater exposure for their content while maintaining their primary site. Judysbook.com gains valuable content from great writers who may not have been willing to contribute reviews directly to Judysbook.com, but will do so through the new blogging interface.

The authors of Technology Evangelist review products on this web site, but people shopping Amazon.com don't have access to our content unless they're subscribers to this site or happen to use a search engine to find reviews of the product they're considering purchasing. If Amazon made it easy for us to publish a link to our review from the appropriate product page of their site, consumers would become better informed and we'd gain some additional traffic to our content.

No company will ever corner the market on opinions, but companies who manage to aggregate and sort the most opinions of products and services will likely provide an extremely valuable service to their visitors.

How do you think this will be done?

Where are you most likely to contribute commentary about a product or service you've used?

What kind of commentary do you find most useful when considering purchasing a product or service?