DISQUS

swag · 8 months ago

The fatal flaw of Yelp is that "normal" users are generally pretty useless. Few have the breadth and depth of experience to have a valuable opinion in a specific category. Not to mention that the system is geared to incentivize the best and worst reviews and to remove incentives for ho-hum average reviews -- and most long tail businesses live in the ho-hum murky middle of the bell curve.

Anthony Ha · 8 months ago

What kind of "breadth and depth of experience" do you need to know that you didn't like the pizza? I mean, I value professional reviewers, but I think random "dude on the street" opinions are useful too.

ITrush · 8 months ago

Hmm, looks like someone's tweeting over there..

Haggie · 8 months ago

The problem is that nobody cares what a bunch of idiots think of Restaurant X and as Yelp's userbase grows, the further it moves away from insightful, useful reviews to inane, useless comments from the hoi polloi. It is the inherent flaw any any review site.

The way to combat this (that Yelp and other review sites have never seemed to grasp) is to allow the user to self-select their own ratings universe. For example, alongside the mass rating for Restaurant X, show me what my "Yelp friends" or people I've flagged as "Trusted Reviewers" have rated it.

I really don't care what some guy with a faux hawk and a tribal armband tat that lives with his parents in San Jose thinks about anything. So allow me to filter out his reviews.

And then design a technology that filters this type of guy out of everything, online and off.

Anthony Ha · 8 months ago

I don't find Yelp as useless as you do, but agree that some filtering would help. I believe that's what Citysearch is doing with its Facebook Connect integration.

NickLeung · 8 months ago

But we at FeedbackJar already allow Business Owners reply.

jk · 8 months ago

I recently posted a new profile at _mill ionair echats.com_, a millionaire and hot girl dating club. I saw celebs' profile with pictures and blog there..By the ways, i've got many friends including celebrities there, believe me.