For this blog entry I chose to listen to one that I thought was quite interesting. I enjoy great food and good businesses and I value what other people think of the industry as well. This interview was posted March 20th 2009 with Bob Garfield and Jeremy Stoppleman(the co-founder and CEO of YELP). The website was founded in 2004 and has reviews from ordinary people and consumers such as ourselves for everyone to access. They review anything from restaurants to nail salons. YELP started in 2004 in San Francisco and has spread to over 24 major cities and has more than 5% million reviews. Businesses are worried because critics are no longer incognito, they could be anyone,anywhere.YELP praises and bashes anything and everything when it comes to businesses. Bob Garfield asks Jeremy, " How did the idea for Yelp start? Jeremy states, We realized that people typically found new businesses searching on the internet and there must be a better way than browsing advertisements, and so what popped into our heads was a really good way to find a local business is to ask around, ask friends for recommendations, and what we tried to create was a place where you could tap into world of mouth online." Then Bob asks, " How do we know that people can give us anything worthwhile of an opinion? Food critics have expertise haven't they? Jeremy says, Food critics have a very precise pallet. What most people realize is that they don't necessarily agree with that one perspective. Yelp provides the opinions of many. You can browse around and read all the different reviews that you want until you get your fill and when you find reviews that are interesting to you you can click on that profile and learn about the person who wrote it." Bob asks, " Is there some kind of secret to reading yelp reviews and not focusing on one particular critic and somehow manage to embrace the commentary as a whole? Jeremy says, Yes when you go to a Yelp page the first thing you notice is the average star rating right there so that you have a broad sense of how that business is doing. You can also look at a number or graphs. You could see very quickly all the 5 star reviews and the 4 star reviews and even the 1 star reviews so that it gives you a overall sense of the big picture. The next thing you will see if we have enough reviews is the fact hat we use software to pull our review highlights. The things that people are talking about.It is almost always positive. The bottom of the page is the users reviews. " Bob states that 35% of "Yelpers" gave 4 our of 5 stars for any given service and 32% gave 5 out of 5 stars." Jeremy says, " If you add it all up 85% of all reviews are either neutral or positive. Bob asks a very important question, " Is there anything you can do against Yelp Fraud? Jeremy says, Absolutely there are protections in place, both from the software side as well as the consumer prospective. It is very difficult to create a personality on Yelp that dies not reflect a real person. Thats our foundation. Yelp is not an anonymous site. Most contributors have very deep profiles and reputations on Yelp." Bob asks," Do you ever delete comments that are manifestly false? Like an animal in your soup? Any protection against restaurant slander? Jeremy says, "Were not in a position to determine what exactly happened and we want to make sure all individuals can share their experiences openly. That said if a business finds something that is clearly outside of review guidelines we will absolutely look into in and pull it down. This is word of mouth. Mostly good rather than bad." In my opinion Yelp is a wonderful website that allows everyday ordinary people such as ourselves(the consumers) to let our voices be heard. This is important in this day and age and technology yet again is how people hear each others opinions and let their voices be heard. It's not just food critics anymore in the business and that is what I like because Jeremy is right when he says that many food critics have a precise pallet and many people don't agree with their taste. Overall I believe Yelp is a wonderful tool that allows us as individuals to voice our opinions and listen to others and then make our decision. It's in a sense word of mouth but really word of type.! Once again New Media prevails. Not a surprise:)
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