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« New adventures | Main | The Wackness »Monday, July 07, 2008
... now for something completely different.
How many of you Yelp? How many of you think it's a good thing? How many of you would think it's a good thing if you knew out in San Francisco they were doing this? Hearing this sort of breaks my heart, mainly because I believe in the spirit of an organic community, and hate the idea that ad reps would effectively be, as the post says, "holding a gun to a restaurant owners' head" just to get a posted review in a top spot. What's a business owner to do? I open this up to you guys - with full disclosure that the site where the discussion is taking place is FohBoh- because you use the Internet as a resource more than most. And because I wonder if I'm the only like-minded user who is surprised and disappointed in these tactics. I was really pretty shocked when I saw the blog post at FohBoh, and I know that Yelp has come under fire recently, but still. Would you support this? Posted by Erin at 08:09 AM | filed under: Blog move commentsI do like referring to Yelp to get an idea of what businesses to patronize. However, what Yelp is doing is something that makes me less likely to do that - I mean, the whole point of the site is that you can plug into reviews from people who presumably don't have an interest in the places they are reviewing. (Aside from the obvious planted reviews, but those are usually pretty easy to spot.) So no, I don't support this at all. A site like Yelp has plenty of potential for user abuse without the site itself pulling dirty tricks. posted by: Kelly at July 7, 2008 01:17 PM O.K., tracked the original article down and it is disturbing. If restaurants are official sponsors, the post should say as much. I have no problem with them posting ads against competitors, but the idea of them handpicking reviews is awfully shady. posted by: tankboy at July 7, 2008 02:05 PM I think this is really wrong and sad. Is this really what it's come down to? Sites like Yelp should not be using this as a tool to get money from restaurant owners. That's not advertising--it's blackmail. posted by: eastsidegirl at July 8, 2008 08:27 AM I actually find that really disappointing. Going to Yelp, for me, is like calling up 100 friends and asking them where they cut their hair or where my husband and I should grab dinner. I feel like, for the most part, people who comment on Yelp are being honest and for something like getting my hair cut I definitely want honesty, warts and all. To find out that Yelp is offering sponsored comments is completely disappointing and totally lame. It's even more disappointing because it seems like such a noob mistake to make. posted by: Meghan at July 8, 2008 02:31 PM |
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Well, since they don't link to the original article I can't say I completely understand the situation. I'm a fan of Yelp though, and use it myself when I'm looking for a loose barometer read on a particular place (restaurants, stores, even my dentist). If they have a paid post listed first, and it's marked as such, t wouldn't bother me at all, but I'm guessing from the tone of the FohBoh comments that is not the case?
posted by: tankboy at July 7, 2008 11:02 AM