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1995 Q: How can you verify the quality of a ? A: Ask your . 2009 Q: Same question. A: Don't need no stinkin' people. We have the internets! 2012 Q: Internet solution doesn't work. How do we fix it? A: Use the 1995 solution.
I find that to be the most shocking statement in the article.
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I can confirm that they still do this, my barber shop says they get hassled all the time.
Well, there goes my ability to trust Yelp reviews as impartial. But if I don't trust the reviews, Yelp effectively degrades into a complicated remix of Google Maps.
We're so out of touch that people are talking about how this space is ripe for disruption and a new startup. Umm, Yelp is an extremely young company. I guess once you're public you're seen as old hat? Pump and dump, and move on to the next thing. Unbelievable.
True, Yelp got the filtering completely backwards in this instance. But, do you base any economic decision on two 5-star reviews from two Yelpers with 0 friends and 4 reviews combined?
Not everyone is a sophisticated Yelp user with an understanding of social networks. A lot of people will simply see two 5-star reviews, zero negative reviews, and think that looks like a safe bet.
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Personally, I use the negative reviews much more than the positives. Especially on business reviews on Angie's List or book reviews on Amazon, I get a lot more info from the negatives. The company itself is usually able to tell me the positives. I don't let a few negatives rule out my business, but it allows me to compare more accurately between alternatives.
If I'm in planning mode and I don't know where I should go eat burgers on Friday, I don't want to know where _not_ to go, I want to know where I should go. Of course, if I want to look a specific place or product, pos and neg reviews are useful.
So, the solution is replacing the CAPTCHA with my SSN? All to post a review? Yeah, that doesn't seem reasonable to me...
Worth mentioning is Yelp's long (alleged) history of using review filtering as a de facto racket to 'encourage' businesses to sign up for their paid services. A company I used to freelance for found that after they stopped paying Yelp for a premium account, they started seeing more negative reviews and a number of their positive reviews were filtered out. They got almost daily phone calls from Yelp marketing types es…
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-m...
Disclaimer: I don't work for Yelp but I have created other user-ratings-based sites before. It's not entirely fair to criticize Yelp for under-emphasizing negative reviews. One of the big hurdles to overcome on a user ratings site is that people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. There is a massive selection bias, and if nothing is done to alleviate this, your site runs the risk of becoming a…
Like you say though, Yelp is just making the playing field uneven in favor of those who pay to play, so none of this matters anyway.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Yelp but I have created other user-ratings-based sites before. It's not entirely fair to criticize Yelp for under-emphasizing negative reviews. One of the big hurdles to overcome on a user ratings site is that people are most motivated to write reviews when they are outraged. There is a massive selection bias, and if nothing is done to alleviate this, your site runs the risk of becoming a…
There's a great big gap between letting all your angry customers (which hopefully you don't have a lot of) leave rants and creating sockpuppets so you have nothing but great reviews. The space between is the basics of word-of-mouth marketing: ask your happiest customers to talk about you.
No one is stopping American Eagle Movers from asking their happy customers to head on over to Yelp and leave them a review. They just don't seem to have any happy customers. So they have to fake it. And then Yelp steps in with their [seemingly] shady selection practices. Hence Justin's disastrous experience.