Posts Tagged ‘Reputation Management’
Yelp Needs a Dose of Fairness
Written by Jay Karen on March 13, 2009 – 8:24 pmRick Wolf of The B&B Team shared with me a recent NY Times article about the online review site, Yelp. Some innkeepers are beginning to see reviews of their properties on this site. From what I can tell, and what this article explains in more details, is that Yelp gives business owners little or no opportunities to defend themsevles against any reviews. They don’t even offer an opportunity for management responses! Read the article here.
The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, says his top priority is “to make sure the community (of reviewers) is protected and can share without fear of being publicly spat on.” Here is where Mr. Stoppelman is off-base. Since reviewers are anonymous, there is no risk of being publicly spat on, because no one knows who the reviewers are. The business owners are the ones who bear 100% of the chance of being publicly spat on. This imbalance is a major, unfortunate flaw in such review sites.
Stoppleman even says, “Business owners want to control their reputation, and we’re just not going to let that happen.” All I can say in response is a dumbfounded, “wow.”
Tags: Online Reviews, Reputation Management, TripAdvisor
Posted in Online Reviews, Reputation Management, TripAdvisor | 7 Comments »
Jay Karen, President & CEO of the 