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Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

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Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#31

Post by tedunangst »

rmorrison wrote: post #8

There is definitely room in the market for a new Yelp, one that is trusted and won't erase bad reviews. I'd like to see something where reviews decay over time though, similar to the HN frontpage. Once a review is "off the frontpage" long enough, it shouldn't be publicly accessible anymore. This would allow small businesses to regain their online reputation after a bad period. Anyway, too bad for Yelp that there isn'…

Except for all the people who read the bad reviews, then write their own bad reviews without even going to the restaurant. I gave up on Yelp long ago after realizing that many of the reviews could not possibly be written by people who had eaten there.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#32

Post by tptacek »

jrockway wrote: post #17
kolosy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my issue isn't impact on the guys that don't play, it's impact on the consumer from the guys that do. a crappy restaurant that has 5 star reviews because the bad ones were paid off hurts me financially.

If you are letting random people on the Internet hurt you financially, you are doing something else wrong. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.

The thesis of your argument is thus that Yelp has no reason to exist. We differ on the reasons but agree on the conclusion. Let's call it a push.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#33

Post by wonlove »

kolosy wrote: post #26
jrockway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that review sites are misleading even when reviews aren't being paid for. Paying people to write reviews makes the data no worse than it already was, because it was already pretty bad.

but that's not what's happening - they're not paying people to write reviews, they're (allegedly) collecting money for removing unfavorable reviews. i think that's more damaging.

that would be incredibly damaging. luckily we don't actually do that.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#36

Post by rapind »

rmorrison wrote: post #8

There is definitely room in the market for a new Yelp, one that is trusted and won't erase bad reviews. I'd like to see something where reviews decay over time though, similar to the HN frontpage. Once a review is "off the frontpage" long enough, it shouldn't be publicly accessible anymore. This would allow small businesses to regain their online reputation after a bad period. Anyway, too bad for Yelp that there isn'…

The big problem with these type of review sites is that it's pretty difficult to guarantee review authenticity. A competitor could post a bad review of your business, you could post a shiny review of your own business, nimrods who've never purchased anything from you can write a bad review, etc.

When there's more money involved, and when the business community being reviewed is more specific and defined it has proven to be very useful and successful. I.e. Angie's List.

Anonymous web reviews were useful once upon a time before the web grew up, and marketers started gaming the system en masse.

What I'd pay for is a sort of premium search tool that guarantees the authenticity of everything it serves up.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#37

Post by emmett »

rmorrison wrote: post #8

There is definitely room in the market for a new Yelp, one that is trusted and won't erase bad reviews. I'd like to see something where reviews decay over time though, similar to the HN frontpage. Once a review is "off the frontpage" long enough, it shouldn't be publicly accessible anymore. This would allow small businesses to regain their online reputation after a bad period. Anyway, too bad for Yelp that there isn'…

Why do you think Yelp is actually erasing bad reviews? It seems most likely that this is sour grapes from business that are unhappy with poor reviews, rather than any wrongdoing on Yelp's part.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#38

Post by tokenadult »

axod wrote: post #22
jrockway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business doesn't lose anything by not playing Yelp's game. You would still go to the cafe if it had a few bad reviews on Yelp, and so would I. (Then again, I read the content of reviews rather than the arbitrary star rating. If someone says "1 star, I ordered a salad and hated it because I hate vegetables" then I am not going to think negatively of the business that has this review attached. I am going to think,…

I was looking for dedicated server hosting the other day, and that market is just ridiculously full of bad, stupid reviews. "This dedicated server provider is terrible! They wouldn't even help me with a mysql problem" etc. I'm sure half the hosting co reviews are done by competitors, and the other half are done by idiots who don't understand anything. And of course all the satisfied customers can't be bothered to wri…

It's always going to be best to get a personal recommendation than trusting reviews on the internet, for anything.

This is precisely why many people expect social networks to play a larger and larger role in commerce.

Re: Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme?

#40

Post by axod »

tokenadult wrote: post #38
axod wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking for dedicated server hosting the other day, and that market is just ridiculously full of bad, stupid reviews. "This dedicated server provider is terrible! They wouldn't even help me with a mysql problem" etc. I'm sure half the hosting co reviews are done by competitors, and the other half are done by idiots who don't understand anything. And of course all the satisfied customers can't be bothered to wri…

It's always going to be best to get a personal recommendation than trusting reviews on the internet, for anything. This is precisely why many people expect social networks to play a larger and larger role in commerce.

The problem with that is, social network 'friends' are usually pretty meaningless. They're certainly not usually people I'd trust to recommend anything.
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