Salon.com > Caren Weiner Campbell http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Everyone’s a critic http://www.salon.com/2000/06/23/consumers/ http://www.salon.com/2000/06/23/consumers/#comments Fri, 23 Jun 2000 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/business/feature/2000/06/23/consumers It's stuffy, it's boring, it's older than your grandmother's Buick, but with a loyal print readership of 4.2 million, Consumer Reports has a secret: The product-rating powerhouse's online publication represents the second most popular online paid subscription after the Wall Street Journal.

But that position is currently under attack.

Call it the new review zoo. Suddenly, consumer-critique sites are starting to multiply. Where once there was only Consumer Reports, John Q. Purchaser now has a handful of new outlets with which to discuss, rate and rant about every fridge or juicer he has ever bought.

Online since 1987 (it was one of the first Web publications, via Prodigy) CR has 410,000 online subscribers, while newcomers like Deja.com and Epinions, which give readers a venue for their own consumer reports, now draw 1.7 million and 1.2 million unique visitors respectively and command ad rates of up to $53 for every 1,000 page views. (Consumer Reports, of course, has a no-advertising policy for both its print and its online versions.)

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