The local IABC says that published "best of" lists are a waste of time.
I’ve been on both sides of this fence. The fact is that best-ofs are typically best sellers. Are they valuable? In the current world, only if a publication’s editors make the decision are they worth using. Otherwise they’re at best popularity and lobbying contests, and at worst advertorial.
But, if you had 100+ user reviews on a wide enough array of providers in a given vertical, posted publicly and not anonymously…
AND the providers had the ability to respond…
AND someone took those reviews and turned them into an easily comprehensible metascore…
THAT would be something.
