Help...Yelp
There is a yet another media scandal brewing. This has to do with Yelp, an online operation that reviews businesses and all sorts of practitioners. They don’t send out professionals in the field to assess the competence of a company or operation. Rather, they invite comments, ostensibly from customers and clients. Or as they describe themselves, "Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great - and not so great, in your area."
So Yelp gets much of its content from people who want to gush or gripe, which is a great labor-saving technique. Regrettably, these comments are as reliable as man-on-the-street interviews, or maybe less so, since so much on the Internet is hype or smash, often written anonymously. An unscrupulous restaurateur, for example, might get his nerdy kid to write scathing pieces about the competition, using fake names, of course, and who would be the wiser.
There have been a number of lawsuits filed against Yelp, mostly by businesses that have been unfairly trashed. Maybe someone didn’t like the way they were treated by a hair stylist or a dentist or a waiter, and maybe they were just having a bad day. Nevertheless, it can unfairly impinge upon someone trying to earn a living.
Much more serious are the allegations that Yelp salesgeeks have been pressuring businesses to buy advertising space. Some busineses say they were threatened with having a ton of bad comments at the top of their page if they didn’t get with the program. But if they did buy sponsorship ads, there would be only good reviews about their establishment.
That sounds like an e-version of you’re gonna find a dead horse’s head in you bed if you don’t pay us off. I don’t know if the charges are legit, but I don’t think a lot of people would go to court with out some evidence. If the charges are true, it would mirror the ethics of having street people write reviews.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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