You've been Yelped

The first page was the worst human interest story I've read. It was structured as though we are to pity the business owner while thumbing our noses at Yelp.<p>For those who haven't read it, essentially the biz owner trolled yelp and then hunted down a critic, and was arrested for battery. Best line: <i>More than anything, she blamed Yelp.</i><p>Edit: If you read the rest of the article, it goes to a salon owner who actually gets it, and her business has benefited from it. Know your customers.

Max Chafkin is a little bit late to the party on this one. Here's an LA Times story with most of the same details:<p><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/11/business/fi-lazarus11" rel="nofollow">http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/11/business/fi-lazarus1...</a><p>I read it when JWZ pointed to it from his "I Hate Yelp" post:<p><a href="http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html" rel="nofollow">http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html</a><p>JWZ runs the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, and is "pretty sure" that he was in fact given a pay-to-play pitch for Yelp placement and review management.<p>For some very specific kinds of businesses --- the kinds unlikely to attract a constant stream of casual reviews --- Yelp has been useful to me. For restaurants and bars, it's less than worthless; "reviewers" clearly do make up random stories ("Publican serves O-Reida fries! Violet Hour serves well-liquor!").<p>In Chicago, we have LTH Forum. It is the polar opposite of Yelp. It is a PHPBB named after a specific Chicago Chinese restaurant that has completely owned up all the reputable food reviews in Chicago. It has no salespeople, makes no profit, is aggressively NOT SEO'd (LTH is never going to be the first hit for anything), appears to be layed out in PHPBB's default template, and is better than any other source of reviews in any city in the US. Every year it gives out awards (the LTH "Great Neighborhood Restaurants"), which --- again, this is a PHPBB site --- are hung in the windows of every restaurant that has received them.<p>You could never post a half-assed troll review on LTH and get anywhere with it. 15 people who'd been there and talked with the chef would write counter-reviews, and the moderator would probably strike your post. Someone needs to figure out how to scale <i>this</i> model.

Overall, I thought it was an excellent article. It had a good "hook" up front with the slightly crazed store owner, and then led into a pretty good description of Yelp's impact on businesses. As a frequent Yelp contributor, and reader, I'd say that 95-99% of reviews are honest, forthright, and make an attempt at some kind of balance. I'm actually quite impressed at how effective Yelp is at keeping both the trolls and shill reviews off their site.<p>The downside of the Yelp "Anti-Shill" algorithm is that it does to tend to have a lot more false positives than false negatives. As a result, infrequent, or new Yelp reviewers will typically have their reviews dropped off the site, or not appear to accounts other than theirs - New Yelp reviewers may not be aware that their Yelp reviews may appear to their logins, but not to others.<p>The foundation of Yelp, of course, are the "Elite" reviewers - They are the equivalent of the "Wikipedia Admins" - by themselves, they are obviously fallable. As a group, you can trust them - particularly the best of the best - someone like <a href="http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=P5bUL3Engv-2z6kKohB6qQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=P5bUL3Engv-2z6kKohB6...</a> is more trustworthy than any restaurant critic you've ever read in the NYT. I can attest his credibility is untouchable, and, with Yelp, you can get a _dozen_ reviews by people like him of high-profile places.<p>Is Yelp Perfect - No. Have they had salespeople (typically teenagers or people in their early twenties) say things on the phone during cold calling that they shouldn't have? Absolutely. Do they maintain a pretty damn good wall between Sales and Advertising/Services - Nowadays, yes. I don't know if that was _always_ the case, but I don't have any strong evidence to the contrary. Just rumor and innuendo. Regardless, they are a pretty upstanding act these days.<p>I'd be interested if anyone has any real evidence of poor behavior lately? I think this is more like Mark Pincus's speech that "when you are small, and struggling, you do all sorts of things that you'd rather not do - Just so you can get to a stage _where you don't have to do those things_ anymore."<p>I think Yelp is now at that stage.

Max (the article's author), I saw that you're posting in the thread. Reading the account on the first page, the bookstore owner sounds troubled. She won't clean her store, and when someone leaves (what I think is) a review with valid criticism, she responds with vitriol. Considering her prior behavior and the fact that the authorities sided with him, I'm inclined to believe Clare's account of the altercation. I don't always cede to the authorities. But considering that the stereotypes were stacked <i>against</i> Clare - male, younger - I bet the cops who interviewed the two decided that Goodman was unhinged.<p>Others here have the same impression. So, two questions. Why did you decide to lead the story with her? And are your conclusions regarding her behavior similar to ours?

This reminds me of the AppStore. You write an App. You publish it. A few weeks later somebody make the first "review": 1/5 stars + a comment "Total crap" without any explanations...<p>You have no possibility to contact this person, no way to delete the review. Sales are down. You can forget the app.<p>Ce la vie.

Summary of first page:<p>* Woman encounters a problem.<p>* She reacts angrily instead of intelligently.<p>* She is surprised when the problem gets worse instead of better.<p>* Yelp is bad.

<i>The company was, literally, conceived over lunch and funded -- to the tune of $1 million -- by dinnertime.</i><p>Interesting. There's more on page 3 in case you didn't read that far.

Business owners need to keep this in perspective. Most people have never heard of Yelp. I had not before I read this. The more you react to what somebody posts in an anonymous forum, the more you call attention to it.

<i>By Max Chafkin | Feb 1, 2010</i><p>Wow, news really travels fast on this site! Can anyone find the Apple Tablet announcement somewhere on the future-web? I'd love to know what it looks like.

does anyone have a business that is featured on Yelp? If so, do they offer any buisness centric tools. Like get satisfaction, where they encourage a dialogue between owner and client rather than one sided posts? If not, maybe some companies would be willing to pay for that kind of ability...

I think it's interesting how /personally/ business owners take feedback. Especially at first, I know my stomach churned rather unpleasantly when I got even a mildly negative review. It's hard not to take it personally.<p>But how you end up handling that, I think, is super important. In my space, it's pretty easy to say "Oh, I'm sorry, would you like a refund?" First, taking responsibility for the problem, and then offering to refund what the customer paid seems to disarm even the most vocal critics. I mean, you don't usually get to keep the customer, but they usually stop saying bad things about you.<p>But really, being 'just a guy' is a little bit of a double-edged sword. you want to be 'human' enough that you seem like a person and not some faceless corporation, but you also need to maintain enough emotional distance that you respond in a polite manner (or don't respond at all) when someone insults the 'baby' you have spent the last 5 years of your life working on.

I actually went to the email thread from the store owner - (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/44269394@N06/sets/72157622595083993/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/44269394@N06/sets/7215762259508...</a>) - I can see why the police tended to believe the customer, and not the store owner. While I recognized that "tone" doesn't carry well in email, I'd be seriously concerned for my welfare if the person who had written those missives showed up at my door one day...<p>"Do you not have a girlfriend? Are you divorced? I can see why...." , "world of pain", "Goodbye pussy boy and I will be contacting your employers", and on, and on...<p>Yowsa!

Sure, the bookstore owner was a psycho, but there are huge problems with Yelp--namely, that if a store/restaurant isn't the kind of thing somebody likes, he posts a 1-star review.<p>"This used book store isn't Barnes and Noble! DO NOT GO HERE IT IS SMALL AND HAS OLD BOOKS"<p>"This corner bar is not a dance club, I could actually hear my friend talking to me. Plus the bartender didn't give me and my friends free drinks for acting like sluts, BARTENDER IS GAY AND THE BAR IS BORING"<p>"This restaurant serves Korean food! I like Chinese food! One star!"

I wish that there was a reviews co-operative that didn't have draconian terms-of-use.<p>Maybe you even get a share of the advertising profit based on the helpfulness of the reviews you write?

My first thought was that the company might be mismanaged. It may be just going through growth pains. The concept seems innocent enough. It sounds like what is needed is is a filter that keeps both sides of the discussion civil and warnings that "this post may be archived" with the appropriate reason so that no one is left guessing.

I think there must be already a service offering everyday good reviews on any selected website like Yelp. For business owners it would be a better brand management tool and probably the least expensive.

Sounds like that business owner Yelped herself!