When you think about how everyone is being reviewed and critiqued on the Internet lately, it is amazing that something as inherently negative such as Yelp is considered to be a valid source of information. Â If you aren’t familiar with it, Yelp.com is website that will allow ANYONE to leave a review or critique about a certain business (restaurants, hotels, plumbers, car dealers, just about anything that takes your cash, etc.).
Right now you are probably thinking, “that’s incredible!  I can make  a sound decision by reading these reviews.”
Here’s where you might want to reconsider what you just thought. Â How many times in your money spending life have you thought of actually taking the time to log into something and write a review? Â If you are having a wonderful experience or service scenario, these days, you are just thrilled that things are going as advertised and you are getting your money’s worth.
However, (ha), if the experience/service was horrible, I bet you and the majority of others would have enough anger/energy to compose a novella on Yelp.com about how horribly you were treated.
There is nothing in the Yelp mission statement about the balance of positive and negative reviews. Â Take a look at the mission statement from the site (my comments are in my WordPress theme’s lame excuse for bold):
Our purpose: To connect people with great local businessesÂ
10 Things You Should Know About Yelp
- Yelp was founded in 2004 to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics. (Lovely idea… Â All search engines have been doing that for years. Â Need a local one? Â Try typing your locality in the search… Lazy idiots).
- Yelp had an average of approximately 78 million monthly unique visitors in Q2 2012. (Big deal. Â Do we really give a shit?)
- Yelpers have written over 30 million local reviews. (Once again. Â Quit stroking your corporate ego and give us your real purpose.)
- In addition to reviews, you can use Yelp to find events, lists and to talk with other Yelpers. (Do you really want to be called a “yelper”?)
- Every business owner (or manager) can setup a free account to post photos and message her customers. (Last I heard, this was called “e-mail” marketing. Â Try using that instead. Â “Oh shit! Â Can’t you just use facebook?” (barf)).
- Yelp makes money by selling ads to local businesses – you’ll see these clearly labeled “Yelp Ads” around the site. (HERE LIES THE PURPOSE OF YELP!)
- Paying advertisers can never change or re-order their reviews. (Really? How the hell would we know?)
- Yelp has an automated filter that suppresses a small portion of reviews – it targets those suspicious ones you see on other sites. (What makes a review “suspicious”? Â How much is a “small portion” of suppression? Â What is the criteria for this “automated filter”?)
- You can access Yelp via iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and more – see the full list of mobile apps here. Â (Can I access it in the newspaper as well? Â HA!)
- The Weekly Yelp brings locals updates on the latest and greatest business openings & other happenings. (aka Spam.)
Left this comment on Huffington post:
To make this system of “everyone is a published critic/reviewer” function properly, it is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE that you submit a GOOD review to yelp as much as you would a bad review. Problem is that people are lazy when they are enjoying themselves and don’t bother saying nice things. Yelp then turns into a truly invalid source for information as it will only contain NEGATIVE COMMENTS. Yelp is irrelevant like most vox populi these days.
in response to this article.
Why did I do all of this?
- I’m angry with the world lately.
- Yelp has hurt some people that I know.
- It has been so long since I seriously sat down and spewed my thoughts into text, and it felt good to do it at the moment. Â (see number 1 above).
Read this post very quick.  I may read it tomorrow, and be so embarrassed at how poorly it is written, I may just rip it down as fast as I posted it.  I hope this doesn’t bring anyone down, its more of  an opinion about the way things are changing in the mass media these days….. maybe just a simple request for people that “reads the Internets” to put shit into perspective.
…. my god… Â what was i thinking? Â that’s FUTILE! Â Just leave a comment if you feel so moved.
c