Today, shopping can leave us confused and frustrated. We have to protect ourselves against rip-offs, greenwashing, and all brands of misinformation. When all of our information comes from people who want our money, the truth gets tucked away and distorted: we see happy gorillas on product labels from companies ruining their habitat. Good news hides bad news: we see "Low Carb" trumpeted loudly on high-fat foods. News we don't want gets relegated to small print on labels, if it's there at all: corporate lobbies spend millions fighting labelling requirements so they don't have to announce potentially dangerous ingredients or undesirable production processes. Manufacturers and merchants pitching for sales are no more reliable than politicians pitching for votes -- we can all see the strong bias in these "first party" sources.
The answer is in third-party sources. Most of us can remember a time when we went shopping with an unbiased expert: an experienced biker pointing out good parts, a food connoiseur pointing out good vegetables, or a local recommending a good restaurant. Those "third-party" experiences can be some of the best shopping experiences of our lives. It's not just that we got a good deal; we feel like we learned something. That's what Hoozers mean when they say shopping should be educational.
Today we don't always have unbiased experts on hand, but tomorrow we can. That's what Hooze.org aims to become: a constant, reliable, expert shopping companion.
None of this means Hooze aims to produce end-all-be-all company and product ratings and reviews; we don't. But we want to create a place where those kinds of ratings can grow and gain acceptance. Many of these may emerge from organizations that you already know and respect. Why don't they have them now? Because if, say, the Sierra Club or Human Rights Watch or any other organization tried to build such a rating system today, they would face two huge hurdles: (1) too much information to gather, and (2) too hard to get the word out.
Hooze.org solves both puzzles. We provide (1) a website for communities to gather and share information, and (2) a mechanism for getting this information to consumers when they can really use it. So Hooze will open the door for lots of sources to come in and weigh and integrate ratings as they see fit, allowing users to pick the sources they trust.
