So, instead of just "companies" as distinct types in Satisfaction...

Well this doesn't really answer the question, but I would think that the number of companies, projects, etc is quickly going to become very large. So I would more want something like a "My Companies" tab, or better yet, "My Products and Services" because that's what the typical (consumer) has to chose from. And then a separate search function for adding whatever products and services I care to follow, and then I can just follow those. This will also allow you to have a passive database of products, services, companies, organizations, whatever, that people can add to their tab without them being "active". It will also give you the user consumption and ownership patterns which will improve your CPM down the road :-) A global view will always be of interest, but customer satisfaction is more about my personal consumer habits and less like the global zeitgeist (e.g. youtube etc).

Just my 5c.

I was going to open a topic titled "distinction between companies and products is confusing".

For the people inside the company, probably not. But for me, as a consumer, I don't make that kind of distinction. For example, I realised that Tumblr was a product made by a company with a different name. To me, Tumblr = what the stuff I use is called = company. I usually know the name of the products I use, I guess, but sometimes I have no idea which company is behind them.

So... will adding more distinctions help or not? Maybe we should just have "Things"? Maybe you can climb out of the taxonomy hole by just letting people tag their "Things" as they see appropriate (and suggest half a dozen tags for the most obvious stuff)?

I like the idea, but have some concerns that this starts opening up a can of worms. One of my previously favourite sites, Yelp, started letting the users go a little nuts - people started to give reviews to everything under the sun (apparently 'Lance Armstrong' is some sort of business people frequent? Then again, maybe he is...) Discussion of that aside, I still use Yelp for reviews, but the idea of it being a resource for actual, real world business reviews started to become diluted in a way. These sites don't have to be a taxonomy of All Things On the Planet - we have other other classification systems for that :)

Anyway, this could work as long as it's kept to things like companies, organizations, clubs or projects - things have have answerable chains of command, ideally real world businesses with customer service departments. As soon as people start creating reviews for people - well, just letting you know this might happen, so be prepared for the Lance reviews :)

Whoa, whoa. I disagree.

If it's not a company or an organization, what is it doing here? Like BarCamp. What the heck is that? "A gathering of geeks... Live action Wikipedia", so one of those video says. I don't think it belongs on Satisfaction. "Project" and "Club" open the doors to all kinds of crap. This isn't a social network. This isn't your email inbox, the magnetic front of your fridge, or the water cooler where you just talk about stuff.

Also, "Project" is too similar to "Product" (both in terms of spelling and in terms of the concept itself). For example, Sprint's WiMax network is really a "project" (you can't buy the network, so it's not really a "product" or a "service", but it's not it's own independent thing, either, it is a part of the Sprint company, a thing they use to provide other products/services). Maybe a company has a product line of similar or coordinating products/services/other things. This would be a "project", but it would still be something that should be underneath the company, not it's own entity.

I think "Event" would make sense here -- BarCamp is a community, of which there are members and events. You should add "community" to your list of global "types" and then allow us to bring in various events, products and other things that we want to discuss.

In fact, each BarCamp could be an event entry on Satisfaction in the context of the "BarCamp Community", allowing us to learn from each event and yet share feedback and support across the context of the community.

Conference is too specific; event makes sense. I'd love to be able to punch in an Upcoming URL in STFN (like you can on Dopplr) and start offering feedback. You'd kill Confabb for one thing. ;)