As stated earlier, a concern for middle aged men is finance. Till now, my time at Moutshut has been complementary to Mouthshut thanks to the complementary audio tapes received. After that, I just lost interest since it was not financially viable to me. Now that MS is reverting back to a paid site once more, I have all the more incentive to log in often to add to that collection of points. The items are not visible in your profile currently, but the dummy gifts page has gift items from mobiles, laptops, car DVD player, to a single BR and double BR apartments! I doubt MS can actually afford to gift homes, or even a two seater plane to everyone, but since it’s a dummy page, they are giving a 2 BR at 20000 points... Yeah, I qualify atleast according to the dummy gifts page. (The page of gift items is available when you try to gift a friend)

So what do you do? - RRC, what else?  

You can turn this site into some ’cream’ if you regularly do that. Provided MS does go paid instead of displaying ’Coming soon’ for the next two years. Also, the offers should be made to offer value products. A paid site always attracts more members than a free site. If you have noticed, the number of reviews on a dull day was around 15 - 40 and when contests arose or on fridays, it ran to around 60. That is still a small number given the leverage MS has over its member database. By announcing the buy using points system, more members are bound to see an incentive to write.

A request - Let’s not do away with the good things of the ’old’. What rocks the place? It’s the comments section. That should at no point be removed to save space or whatever concerns, since that is the only way members can network and make more friends. Now I have a few questions for Faisal. I know I am sounding cliched since I have already written one earlier to Faisal.., but that was cliched allright, and so is this. But why not add 50 more points to my points? (How greedy can I get? ;-)) So here are my questions to Faisal -

a. What is the time frame to make this a paid site? Is it ’soon’, ’coming soon’ or a specific date?

b. Ok. I note that I am unable to view my prior reviews, my trusted lists and other info. How soon will this be displayed?

c. What are the categories of products offered? Is housing included? (as I note the inclusion from the dummy gifts page.)

d. When, exactly when do I start redeeming my points?

e. Does a star writer get more points due to the star? Or is there any other specific advantages in being a star? (If it does, trust me, I aim to be one. why not if I get more points?)

f. Site is still slow. When?

g. Why is there no points awarded to leave comments? One of the other paid sites has a drastic reduction in the number of comments since there is no incentive for that. Are you planning any points for that?

h. Are you planning to list the company? If so, can I swap my points for shares? What are the future plans of Mouthshut?

i. On  a personal note, why don’t you write reviews?

j. The statistics is no longer displayed. Is there any speciific reason?  Also I note that only the reviews I rate are displayed. Does that mean the statistics is no longer considered for the points system?

BTW, I’m already reasonably enthused to see the change. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on it being implemented soon. On a comparative basis with other sites, I expect atleast 150-200 reviews per day. That’s still a modest figure, but a drastic increase from the current ...