Yelping For Your Business

Yelp is a popular review and social networking site in the Bay Area. Yelp also covers other regions but my understanding is that they've had limited traction outside of the Silicon
Valley Heartland, partly because Yelp's strategy is to bring people together in reality as well as online through Yelp parties. Although I think blending reality and online worlds is a clever idea, the labor intensiveness of real parties may limit Yelp's ability to grow in the explosive way that other social networks can, unhindered by real world limitations.

What is clear is that Yelp can help or harm the businesses that people are reviewing. Yelp has launched "Yelp for Business" which will allow businesses to create their own dialog on the website. In my view this is a great approach rather than heavy moderation of comments which can distort the natural dialog. Unfortunately people will often rant unfairly or opportunistically about other businesses, but this should give those businesses a better opportunity to enter the dialog and correct misperceptions.

There will still be unfair challenges for reviewed businesses, however. A common marketing tactic is to criticize competitors and praise others based not on merit but on who hired the most aggressive online marketing team or - in an even more subtle form of bias - who has been the most persuasive at having happy customers leave comments at social networking sites like Yelp. For example a clever Bed and Breakfast might "invite" happy customers to leave favorable feedback at sites they have bookmarked on the computer they have for their guests while guests who are unhappy are simply not directed to do so. This is a form of "white hat" marketing that does not break any rules, but also does not present a high order picture of the establishment.