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April 21, 2009
Yelp Controversy Revisited
By Marian Short
Remember the Yelp controversy? The East Bay Express reported Yelp was allegedly tampering with online reader reviews after restaurants refused to “pay” to have negative reviews removed. Well, subsequent coverage from diverse news outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times and Huffington Post has called many points of the story into question.
A feature at The New York Times stressed the difficult territory the online company negotiates – Yelp must be fair to its citizen reviewers and readership, but also cannot ignore the needs of its businesses, some of which advertise on the site. The Times also pointed to Yelp policies with advertisers that could cause confusion among other restaurateurs, as well as the closely guarded workings of its anti-spam algorithm “which makes a small number of reviews come and go from a typical business' page,” according to Yelp’s blog.
Closer to home, the Silicon Valley-based Mercury News characterized the “Yelp controversy” as a “digital culture clash.” Columnist Chris O’Brien theorized that while internet usage by small business owners is in line with the population at large, most still do not focus on Web 2.0 in connection with their businesses; O’Brien cited a recent survey estimating only 44 percent of small business owners have a Web site.
This week, Yelp announced its decision to allow restaurants to respond to reader reviews. For more details on this new development view the features from:
The New York Times, Yelp Will Let Businesses Respond to Web Reviews
San Jose Mercury News, O'Brien: Yelp controversy is a digital culture clash
Yelp Web Blog, East Bay Express Story Starts to Unravel
Posted by staff at April 21, 2009 03:39 PM
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