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Are Those Reviews Coming From a Trusted Source?
By Sebastien Provencher at January 22, 2008 3 CommentsToday’s New York Times has an article on hotel and restaurant reviews. They mostly talk about TripAdvisor and IgoUgo (which I had never heard of until today) and compare them to Zagat. Most of the information in there has been thoroughly discussed before (user reviews vs. editor reviews, moderated vs. un-moderated comments) but one quote from Tim Zagat (Zagat’s co-founder) really stood out for me. Talking about consumer reviews, he said:
“Some Internet companies are running into the problem that anybody can throw up things on the wall, and after a while there are just too many people doing it.”
What it means: Tim Zagat is onto something. He doesn’t express it that way but it’s all about reviews from “trusted sources”. A trusted source could be, for example, a pro reviewer/critic (aggregated in sites like Metacritic.com), a friend or someone from an affinity group (or trusted community). Some of the travel and review sites out there suffer from a lack of “trusted sources” and it’s the reason why we often feel like there’s too much information to process when we see hundreds of reviews for a hotel or restaurant. Why would I trust travelingmom526 or baroudeur2004? If they’re not direct contacts, how do I know if they have the same taste as me?
Labels: travel, user reviews
3 Comments
This is so true. The future is not about one trusted source, but rather about recommendations from people with similar taste as your own.
Great article.
Your readers might want to try http://www.Measuredup.com a leading customer service review website where people share reviews with other users and with companies. Companies that are involved with and value customer service read Measuredup to keep up on what people are saying and to be able to improve customer service.
It is free and easy to use.
When I went to Europe last summer, I booked all my lodging via venere.com. They only take reviews from people who have booked AND PAID for the property through them. Now that’s trusted! I loved it! The comments were spot on and you knew they weren’t coming from the (disguised) proprietors (or their friends & family), competitors or someone with a bone to pick. I wish others could adopt the same model, but I haven’t seen it yet elsewhere.