Livefyre adds a real-time review system to its social content service

Livefyre today announced LiveReviews, a new tool for enabling user-generated ratings and reviews for publishers. This service is launching with four partners – Time Out, Allure, Universal Music Group Australia and CNET.

LiveReviews syncs up with Livefyre’s existing commenting, live-blog and chat services, so publishers that use the firm’s commenting system and other tools can manage their data in one place.

Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer said the company originally expected LiveReviews to work for about 25-30 percent of its customers, but the product now looks like it could have broader reach, as some of its initial partners are using it to introduce reviews on their sites for the first time.

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“We actually think that 50 percent of our base is going to end up using it as part of their engagement strategy,” Kretchmer said. “The thing we’re most excited about is the fact that all of the data coming in, all the reviews being left, can be reaccessed via API.”

Peter Yared, CTO at CNET’s parent company CBS Interactive, said LiveReviews fit into a re-platforming process for the site since it would match the commenting system and save them having to build a new review setup from scratch.

Yared added that moving to Livefyre was a big shift for CBS, as the company had relied solely on its own technology up to that point. When the two started working together, LiveFyre was still a small team.

“It’s rare for a media conglomerate to work with a 7-8 person team on something so core,” Yared said.

The two companies have continued to work closely together since then. With regard to today’s announcement, CBS actually helped LiveReviews become real. When Livefyre mentioned the idea to Yared early on in the process, he encouraged them to build it by confirming that CBS would adopt the product.