I *JUST* figured it out. First… yelp is irreverent, goofy, meaningless fun to me as reviewer, lacking professional capacity. Which is too bad for yelp, because that means I don’t take it seriously – and I am a foodie that should. So what happened?
This isn’t a joke, but I was trying to professionally explain yelp reviews vs open table reviews, and it’s sort of like myspace vs. facebook. myspace could be anyone, right… zero verification, zero anchor in reality, etc. while Facebook is supposed to verify and legitimize that the individual is who they say they are. That is more like opentable, having had to dine to be able to review. Well in the end, it sort of slipped out…. yelp is the myspace of UGC/UGR sites. That being said, it sounds REALLY bad. And it made me realize… yes it is an AWESOME, and powerful, site that helps you interact, and communicate with your guests…. and yes you have to go where your guest/customer/consumer hangs out… but they have no money, are getting raked over hot coals here and there, and I wonder if it has the power to ignore their issues, and still end up successful. Probably. Hopefully they will figure it out….
In response to this article, I said this: It is so much more complex than just “good or bad”, just as my complicated ramble here probably suggests. I *really* dislike yelp for so many reasons… mainly for ones of total lack of verification. It’s sort of the myspace of the review world. But this post sort of explains it a little…
Open Table reviews are obviously more legitimate. It’s night and day…
but there are few platforms (and tripadvisor get attacked on some of the same levels you talk about yelp here) where I can reach out to guests or clients, engage them on their experience, and learn from them, or use their review as an endorsement – advocating your business with not one dollar of marketing money spent. These reviews add up… and it is a forest for the tree thing.
Individual trees are stupid, wrong, boring, lies on behalf of an owner or angry customer, etc. =) (I do not believe in stupid trees, don’t worry… just following through a bad analogy)
The forest is an amalgamation of healthy trees, unhealthy trees, neutral ones, etc…. and that forest ends up being really big.
I used to waste all my time with individual reviews and the algorithmic problems, etc
But we are focused on a minute few, TEENY percentage of the overall reviews. Then you start throwing out all the reviews that are windbaggish, pointless, or just obviously not helpful, and you *STILL* have a large amount of valid reviews of people handling, interacting, and messaging your brand….. if you ignore that you are, simply, out of touch. You can barely handle or maintain a brand message anymore… it’s all in the hands of the consumers. Whether you like it or not, businesses need to go to where the customers are, and defer to them. If you simply let people manipulate or slam your brand with no interaction…. it’s irresponsible. So this gets into the ethical realm…. does yelp’s ethics violations become egregious enough for one to violate the need for your business to succeed. This is a serious ethical discussion…. but I don’t think yelp’s problems necessitate that I step away from the site, potentially hurting my business. Frankly… yelp is a medium, where I am communicating and interacting directly with customers. I don’t care what yelp is doing, because it’s successful from a biz end.
But it comes down to this:
I get to directly interact with guests/customers – learn from them, engage them, and let them advocate our brand. I can repair damaged situations, give personal, intimate service on the cold wide web, and help my businesses survive and grow during this down economy and broken marketing model.
However, i don’t think Yelp will be here forever. Social media is young, and growing. Eventually this will turn into a real time interaction, or a more meaningful, standardized form of reviewing (could you imagine if opentable started allowing business owners to interact with reviewers?)
Whatever the case, I know there isn’t another viable option for yelp… myspace had the catbird seat for years when facebook started. And it fell in less than a year.
Here’s to hopin. I don’t want to see anyone fail. I do want to see someone make social media nad the power of online reviewing BETTER than what we have now, pure and simple. If sites that lack internal fitness die out during that race, we’re better for it.
So…. Yelp is the Myspace of UGR sites. I repeat it a lot because it struck me like a brick. As they become the titanic alone in the waters, and ignore the icebergs….. they will lose everyone as the reviews become more diluted with vacuous nonsense. Eventually everyone will go away when the new, standardized form of communication happens…. whatever that is. Social media is young, but as it grows…. social review sites are never deemed too big to fail…. so they need to change their course completely, or start fading into irrelevance as they sink to the bottom of the sea.