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Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

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Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#81

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

We New Yorkers have relied upon the wisdom of Zagat's for many decades. Please, I beg you, be kind to this brand and don't change the things that enable the content to be so high quality and reliable.

A lot of things that New York used to excel at - taxis, delivery, etc. - are now being offered to the rest of the world at terribly high prices and remarkably sub-par service. It has come to impact the NY services that started it all. Please, don't be the Uber to Zagat's yellow cab.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#82

Post by CommieBobDole »

majos wrote: post #18
aphextron wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precisely are you guys doing to ensure review authenticity? This is the number one reason I ignore all reviews all the internet but Yelp.

Really? I find even Yelp reviews low quality in general, so I use older methods (food forums like Chowhound or eGullet, some bloggers I'm familiar with, sometimes even newspaper critics) to find restaurants. Too many Yelp reviewers take off points for feeling disrespected in odd ways or don't know much about food to begin with. I don't really trust a completely random person's opinion on food, so I prefer going to th…

I've been able to get some value out of Yelp reviews by using the the following guidelines:

First and of course, look at the overall number of reviews and score as a rough guideline. You're probably not going to get burned going to a place with 700 reviews averaging 4.5 stars. Might not be as good as its reviews, but it's probably not crap.

Second, ignore any review with the word "groupon" or "scoutmob" in it. For whatever reason these always seem to be nitpicks about service specifically related to the offer. And if I had a dollar for every "Groupon was for item A, I wanted to apply it to item B, they wouldn't, one star" I've seen, I'd be a wealthy man.

Third, ignore most of the five star and one star reviews. Mostly undeserved gushing, and angry ranting, respectively.

Fourth, generally avoid anything from a user that has "Yelp Elite" next to their names. While some of these are good reviews from informed food enthusiasts, a lot of them are just long-winded twee crap from folks who like the idea of being "elite" at something.

Finally (and most importantly), pay special attention to the two and three star reviews. This is the meat of Yelp. They will say moderately bad things about the restaurant, usually with reasons to back it up. Often you'll start to see a theme. Whatever issues the restaurant has, this is where you'll find them. This is where you'll find out the popular place for some cuisine is actually kind of mediocre and everyone familiar with that cuisine goes somewhere else that's less popular but has better food, or whatever.

Then you ask yourself, "Is this something I care about?" If I want the best Ćevapi in town, do I really care about the dozen two and three star reviews that complain that the waiters only speak Croatian? Or will I show up with my handy Croatian phrasebook?

Yelp is a pit of crap, but there's gold in that crap. Usually.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#83

Post by buckhx »

alexbeloi wrote: post #69
buckhx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our main source of revenue right now is through partnerships with brands who we see as sharing in our values. We have always believed that by providing quality content and by keeping our partnerships no bullsh*t and to brands that gel with us and that we believe our users will legitimately be interested in, our user base would remain loyal and interested in what we and our brand partners have to say. That model has w…

Is brand partner another word for advertiser/marketer? I see a couple image ads on the reviews, but I doubt that brings in much revenue. So are doing things like product placement/mentions in-article? I hope you don't accept money from anybody pushing you to review particular restaurants.

Our deals with partners are a combination of integrated content (API), events and branded content.

We respond to RFPs from brands with a proposal of how we would help them reach their goals and then execute it. Examples of brands we've worked with are Amex, Delta, Caviar, etc.

We never accept money from restaurants or groups representing their interests, something we really try to hammer home in our review ride-alongs on Instagram.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#84

Post by eitally »

rz2k wrote: post #79
buckhx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On The Infatuation we have staff writers visit a restaurant multiple times and make sure we have our opinion has been as informed as possible. Our biggest problem is scaling that process and we want to use Zagat to help with that via user generated content. We want to take learnings from other UGC platforms to inform the direction we take with Zagat and a big piece of that is authenticity.

Do you have a specific market of consumers you want to target? A while ago there was large thread on Reddit asking anyone who had eaten at the Olive Garden in Times Square, why [1] they had chosen to eat there. There were people who thought it was one of the funniest questions that they'd ever read on /r/askreddit, and people who didn't understand why it was an interesting or funny question. Byant Park Grill is a nea…

Thank you for so clearly articulating an extremely common problem.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#85

Post by kelukelugames »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #81
buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

We New Yorkers have relied upon the wisdom of Zagat's for many decades. Please, I beg you, be kind to this brand and don't change the things that enable the content to be so high quality and reliable. A lot of things that New York used to excel at - taxis, delivery, etc. - are now being offered to the rest of the world at terribly high prices and remarkably sub-par service. It has come to impact the NY services that…

I first heard of the infatuation when they made the news a few years ago for being tasteless. It's the same people running the company, but it's possible they've changed.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#86

Post by Eric_WVGG »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #81
buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

We New Yorkers have relied upon the wisdom of Zagat's for many decades. Please, I beg you, be kind to this brand and don't change the things that enable the content to be so high quality and reliable. A lot of things that New York used to excel at - taxis, delivery, etc. - are now being offered to the rest of the world at terribly high prices and remarkably sub-par service. It has come to impact the NY services that…

"things that New York used to excel at - taxis"

wait what

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#87

Post by rz2k »

eitally wrote: post #84
rz2k wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a specific market of consumers you want to target? A while ago there was large thread on Reddit asking anyone who had eaten at the Olive Garden in Times Square, why [1] they had chosen to eat there. There were people who thought it was one of the funniest questions that they'd ever read on /r/askreddit, and people who didn't understand why it was an interesting or funny question. Byant Park Grill is a nea…

Thank you for so clearly articulating an extremely common problem.

It seems like an unusual problem. Zagat reviewers[1] were volunteers, but they remained anonymous so there was little opportunity to promote themselves. If I remember people seemed motivated by getting a guide sent to them and feeling like they were part of an in group. I don't know what would work now to avoid fake reviews and reviews promoting the reviewers.

It would be interesting to see what happened if it were limited to a subset of people who used OpenTable for minimum number of reservations per year or some other metric, and then was based on a Keynesian Beauty Contest[1], where a consensus is divined by reviewers earning prizes for correctly guessing which restaurants other reviewers like.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=CfS7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA46&lpg=P...

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#88

Post by shostack »

buckhx wrote: post #83
alexbeloi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is brand partner another word for advertiser/marketer? I see a couple image ads on the reviews, but I doubt that brings in much revenue. So are doing things like product placement/mentions in-article? I hope you don't accept money from anybody pushing you to review particular restaurants.

Our deals with partners are a combination of integrated content (API), events and branded content. We respond to RFPs from brands with a proposal of how we would help them reach their goals and then execute it. Examples of brands we've worked with are Amex, Delta, Caviar, etc. We never accept money from restaurants or groups representing their interests, something we really try to hammer home in our review ride-along…

So would this be more of the original Buzzfeed model then where brands would get sponsored posts written for them, and then Buzzfeed would handle the marketing of said post?

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#89

Post by telltruth »

What's up with Google selling all these cool properties? Are they running out of money? :). More likely it's just management getting too short sighted for creative and quirky startups to thrive or even survive there. May be thanks to Ruthless Ruth and clueless Rosenstein blessed with penny pincher Page. I've heard stories about Boston Dynamics being treated with such a heavy hand to contribute to bottom line and give up on their long term vision that they rather just wanted out. Google used to be a very cool company. It stopped being cool on the day Boston Dynamics left the building.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#90

Post by ericd »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #86
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We New Yorkers have relied upon the wisdom of Zagat's for many decades. Please, I beg you, be kind to this brand and don't change the things that enable the content to be so high quality and reliable. A lot of things that New York used to excel at - taxis, delivery, etc. - are now being offered to the rest of the world at terribly high prices and remarkably sub-par service. It has come to impact the NY services that…

"things that New York used to excel at - taxis" wait what

It's true, NYC cabs are great relative to cabs in most other cities. I still find them generally more convenient than Uber when I visit.

Or are you talking about "used to excel"?

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