What Would Yelp Be Without The Negativity? Recommendations Instead Of Reviews

from the nothing-nice-to-say dept

SF Weekly's 4,333 word exposition about Yelp delves into many of the recent foibles of the not-yet-profitable community site. Since its inception in 2004, Yelp has played a key part in imbuing every-day consumers with the powers of professional critics. Now, with consumer reviews posted and shared online, instead of disappearing into the black hole of the customer feedback box, businesses shudder with fear at the potential of a bad review on Yelp. Sure, any business that regularly provides bad service would eventually succumb to the collective ire of community displeasure, but anecdotally, Yelp seems to amplify this effect. Although consumer reviews have been around for ages on sites like Amazon and CNET, Yelp's focus on local businesses expose a vulnerability not really seen in, say, the consumer electronics or book industry. An evening's dining choice is relatively fickle compared to a decision to buy a plasma tv, and one can see how that decision could be easily derailed by one strategically placed negative review. That said, as consumers become more savvy to sites like Yelp, their tolerance for a bad review or two should hopefully build. Or, as seen in the recent case of a San Francisco pizzera, businesses could learn to embrace their bad reviews.

Here's a thought. Whenever I visit a new city, I ask my friends for their recommendations, not reviews, of restaurants in the area. While it might be amusing to hear them rant about how awful such-and-such place was, ranting really does little good when trying to pick a place to eat out of the vast array of options that a typical city has to offer. Instead, maybe it's time for Yelp to put on the rose-colored glasses and offer an alternative view of the world: one where only recommendations exist. This is the approach taken by eats.it, a restaurant recommendation site that currently only serves San Diego. With no bad reviews to complain about, the complaint that a merchant doesn't get enough recommendations sounds much more like sour grapes. Furthermore, advertising on a page that features only recommendations of their establishment is a much more palatable proposition. Is the consumer less served by this rosy-eyed view of the world? Perhaps, but it would not be hard to see which establishments received less recommendations than others. Maybe mothers everywhere knew the answer all along when they advised: "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."

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SF Pizzeria Puts 1-Star Yelp Reviews On Its T-Shirts

from the never-met-a-pizza-i-didn't-love dept

With all of the recent news about merchants up in arms over negative online reviews, a San Francisco pizzeria has decided to take a brilliant approach to the (albeit few) negative Yelp reviews about their restaurant. In a sort of "take back the night" approach, Delfina Pizza has adorned its staff with t-shirts that bear the text of their 1-star reviews. With sayings like "The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat," Delfina boldly acknowledges that it understands everyone is a critic, and that it is not afraid of a bad review or two. Gone are the Ratatouille days where restaurants live or die by one star of some food critic's review; instead, perhaps restaurateurs will learn that reviews are a starting point for holding meaningful conversations with their customers. Of course, in this particular case, the strategy may backfire -- already one Yelp reviewer has submitted a 1-star review asking "am i good enough for a t-shirt now?"

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Lawyer Who Sues Yelp Admits He Had No Idea About Section 230 Safe Harbors

from the great-moments-in-lawyering dept

Last week, we wrote about a defamation lawsuit over a review on Yelp, which seemed to backfire -- bringing a lot more attention to the negative review than if left alone. That case actually was settled soon after, but yet another defamation lawsuit has been filed by yet another person -- this time a dentist -- over a negative review. There are a few things worth commenting on about this lawsuit, but the big one that caught my attention is that the lawsuit was filed both against the couple who wrote the review... and against Yelp.

Now, as pretty much everyone knows around here, filing against Yelp is a big no-no. Yelp is clearly protected by section 230 safe harbors that make third party service providers immune from liability for actions of their users. This is pretty widely known among anyone involved in anything having to do with internet law... but was not known by the lawyer who filed the suit. In fact, the lawyer admits in the article above that he "wasn't aware" of the law and will probably drop the suit against Yelp now that he knows about it. But, it certainly raises questions about the lawyer if he was totally unaware of a key piece of internet legislation before filing such a lawsuit.

Then, there's the bizarre response from the dentist, replying to the point that Yelp lets the service providers directly contact those who write negative reviews to try to clear up the problem. The dentist says: "I would be very upset and would not know what to say to them." Fascinating. So, rather than talking it out as adults and clearing up any misunderstanding (and from the sound of it, it was a basic misunderstanding), she jumps straight to the lawsuit stage? She doesn't know what to say to them, but has no problem dumping a lawsuit on them. Isn't America great?

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Negative Review On Yelp Leads To Defamation Lawsuit

from the this-again? dept

There have been plenty of stories about companies suing people for posting negative reviews about their business practices, and it still seems like a really dumb thing to do -- as in the end all it does is call a lot more attention to the negative review. That's what appears to be happening with a lawsuit over a negative review of a chiropractor on Yelp. The review claimed that the chiropractor was using questionable business and billing practices. The chiropractor threatened the reviewer -- and even though the review was deleted, sued the guy for defamation. Of course, now the details of the supposed unethical billing practices (involved trying to bill insurance companies significantly more, and when that didn't work coming back to the guy and asking him to pay up instead) are getting a lot more attention.

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Yelp Angers Its Merchants By Deleting Their User Accounts

from the yelp-me-rhonda dept

Review site Yelp caused quite a ruckus this week when they deleted a bunch of user accounts that they deemed to be gaming the system. Many of the users whose accounts were deleted were business owners -- Yelp accused them of trading positive reviews with other business owners, quid pro quo. Yelp has had a tumultuous relationship with its merchants in the past because of negative reviews from Yelpers; some merchants had even tried to ban Yelpers from even visiting their establishments. This tension is unfortunate, since Yelp makes its money from selling these very merchants their services. That said, hopefully Yelp has not overlooked the larger problem that still exists on their site: an overwhelming number of reviews per establishment without any good tools for filtering or determining trust. Furthermore, Yelp has become quite a target for "Foodies," who complain that the reviews from users are pedestrian and inconsistent; Eater has an entire column devoted to the "shortcomings and nuances of the Yelp empire." Despite all of the negative attention that Yelp has been getting, the most important factor is whether or not it continues to grow as a useful resource for users. Yelp just recently surpassed Citysearch in number of users in March of this year, so perhaps they are on the right path.

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Knowing What Business You're In Includes Knowing Who Your Most Important Customers Are

from the three-sided-market dept

One of the themes we've emphasized here at Techdirt is that it's essential to know what market you're in. We've mostly talked about that in terms of knowing when to give away infinite resources in order to sell expensive resources. But another key component is recognizing where the value of your business comes from. For example, one of the keys to Google's success has been their recognition that even though their revenue comes from advertisers, their real value is their users, and so they've focused on keeping users happy. Google knows that as long as they have a lot of users, the advertisers will come to them, but if they drive away users they may not come back. The Bits blog has an even more striking example of the same principle: Bits says that Yelp, the restaurant review site, is succeeding because they recognize that the key to success for their market was to cater to a subset of their users -- their volunteer reviewers. If they have good reviews, users will come to them, and if they have users, the advertisers will come. So they've focused on making reviewing an easy and rewarding experience. The site has focused on building community among the reviewers themselves, adding social-networking functionality so reviewers can connect with each other and follow each others reviews, and even hosting social functions where the most prolific reviewers can meet face to face. Yelp is also careful to shield reviewers from irate restaurant owners: a business owner is allowed to send a reviewer one message, but if he doesn't get a response he's not allowed to contact the reviewer again.

One way to look at this is as a multi-sided market. Traditional media outlets, for example, operate in a two-sided market, where they trade content for eyeballs, and then sell the eyeballs to an advertiser. Yelp's business model is similar, except that they exist in a three-sided market. First, they have to make the site appealing enough to reviewers that they'll write a lot of reviews. Then they use the reviews to attract eyeballs, which they finally sell to advertisers. All three of these are "customers" in some sense, but because the reviewers are what ultimately attracts everyone else to the site, they're ultimately the most important to the site's long-term success. Although Yelp certainly has its share of critics, the basic strategy of catering to reviewers seems like the right one for a review-oriented site.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Banning Anyone Who Reviews Your Shop Online Isn't Likely To Generate Much Business

from the what's-a-sign-that-your-store-isn't-customer-friendly? dept

We all know that sometimes customer reviews online can be a bit harsh, but it's something that companies need to learn to deal with. Some take proactive approaches by responding to the complaints with their own side of the story or by apologizing and promising that changes will be made to avoid similar problems in the future. However, one cafe owner has taken things to a different level, apparently putting a sign in the window of the cafe, saying that users of popular online review site Yelp are not allowed as customers. This is effectively saying that the shop owner has no interest in what its customers think of it, has no interest in improving the quality of service and doesn't seem to realize that this will only encourage anyone who has a bad experience to go to Yelp and post about it. In fact, putting this sign in the window seems likely to damage the reputation of the cafe a lot more than any bad review on Yelp.

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