the buzz log

Transparencies about salaries and job satisfaction? Sounds like a communist plot brewing.

Only a few days old on the Web, Glassdoor is already blanketed in buzz. The site allows working Joes and Janes to dish on their corporate life, from salary to CEO (dis)satisfaction.

While built on the same free concept as travel site TripAdvisor or real estate tell-all Zillow (whose CEO happens to be a Glassdoor founder), the rating system does require participation to see all company reviews.

The most practical appeal may lie in the naked dollar. Despite—or perhaps because of—a rabidly capitalistic bent, Americans are loath to reveal their compensation... except through the magic of anonymity and aggregation. While the San Francisco Chronicle summed up the possible legal brouhahas in revealing the information, Salon already charted a software engineer salary graph—even though Glassdoor boasts only 3,300 reviews at launch.

Middle management and HR hair-pulling aside, will Glassdoor work? Its launch this week already pushed the term into the top 40,000 searches. The initial Silicon Valley bias naturally has brought in online onlookers from the San Francisco-Bay Area and Sacramento, but interest also hails from Chicago, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Despite the heavy tech emphasis, women make up 40% of queries.

To compare: Zillow's 2006 launch attracted six times more buzz, and now ranks in the top 1,000 searches this past week. Arguably, there may be more homeowners curious about their assets (and their neighbors') then people comparing their corporate lot.

Then again, Glassdoor's timing during the highest unemployment jump in years may not necessarily be bad: People who feel stuck may find the site a good place to vent, brag or whistleblow. If this were around when Scott McClellan was in the White House...