At Epinions.com, everyone_s an expert.

When most people make buying decisions, they generally discuss their purchase with family and friends. Now, a new company, Epinions.com, is hoping consumers will supplement those conversations with online information and advice from regular folks familiar with various products. Nirav Tolia, CEO of epinions.com, discusses the firm_s strategy. He appeared on CNBC ondnesday. The online shopping guide, which officially launches Wednesday, is "obsessed with helping consumers make the right buying decisions," according to Mike Speiser, one of Epinions.com_s cofounders. Speiser said that Epinions operates on the premise that when people make buying decisions, they typically do two things: talk to people they know and talk to professionals. Epinions hopes to replicate the kind of discussions that people have with those they know. Epinions provides product information written by everyday people and also includes professional opinions and buying guides. Epinions has plans to branch out into providing local service information as well as international product and service information. Visitors to the site submit their "epinions" of particular products, which are ranked by users according to usefulness. The most useful epinions then come up first in searches, similar to online auction site eBay. Anyone can contribute and each contributor is considered an expert. Each expert_s photo comes up with his/her epinion along with a link to a self-written biography. Experts will be paid per page view and will likely have an option to contribute their earnings to a charity. Individual epinions are not edited and remain on the site permanently. To edit or remove comments, Speiser said, would be biased - and would conflict with the site_s purpose. The only guidelines for contributions are that each epinion be at least 75 words and contain no profanity. Product categories currently include autos, computers, electronics, media, outdoors, sports and travel. Categories will be added or modified based on consumer use.Epinions is different from other consumer information sites in that nothing is edited internally and the site is not a general discussion site, but instead provides highly specific information about products - albeit written by users. The site can accommodate 30 million simultaneous users, the company says. Epinions plans to generate revenue through advertising and relationships with various retailers.The company, founded in April, has generated a lot of discussion over the past few months because the founders all left prominent positions - and millions in stock options - at companies including Yahoo!, Excite@Home, Netscape and AOL.