dna is a rad place and i have utmost respect for the people who run it (i'm actually 50yds from it right now), but jwz's comments don't prove anything. for one thing, night club reviews notoriously suck ass on yelp or any other review site, and therefore shouldn't be taken as the standard. anyone with half a brain can parse through the stupid reviews if they really care that much about a venue, but most of the time if you're going to a club you're going for a specific night or event and you'll judge for yourself. yelp's sweet spot is really restaurants, particularly restaurants in major cities.
also, speaking to his specific claims of "extortion", i don't believe they hold water. paying a fee to put your favorite review on top or putting sponsored links on the site (like google) seems pretty legit to me. deleting negative reviews etc is shady, but i think the jury is out whether that is true or not.
i know i've personally found yelp invaluable moving around to new cities over the past few years. being someone who loves food, i find the vast majority of the time the reviews of restaurants are completely on point, especially if you know how to parse through the comments. does anyone remember the days when the only thing that existed was citysearch? what a piece of junk. i've found so many amazing places on yelp that i wouldn't have found otherwise.
in my experience most small businesses (mostly restaurants) i ask about yelp love it. i ran into a restaurant owner who's friends with a friend of mine in berkeley a few months ago. he was ecstatic about yelp because that night 20 of his seats were filled by yelp alone.
i'm all for exposing shady practices of yelp or any other company for that matter, but most of this stuff is baseless.
"paying a fee to put your favorite review on top or putting sponsored links on the site (like google) seems pretty legit to me"
Are you kidding? It's a review site! Silently manipulating results based on payment from the reviewees is a hideous betrayal of trust. It is absolutely NOT legit.
"in my experience most small businesses (mostly restaurants) i ask about yelp love it"
Who the hell walks around asking businesses what they think about Yelp? Got something to tell us? I'd call you an astroturfer right now if you hadn't been a member so long.
"i'm all for exposing shady practices of yelp or any other company for that matter, but most of this stuff is baseless."
Baseless, is it? Well, I'm waiting for this inside info you've obviously got. Sounds pretty base-ful to me.
1. this isn't like search results where there is an algorithm that returns the quality of review. by most standards one review is the same as the next. the ability for a business to highlight the review in which they feel puts them in the best light (read, actual review) seems like a legitimate compromise to me.
2. haha, oh man, i guess i can see how someone thinks im an employee, but in reality i'm an entrepreneur (yc w08 actually) who lives in san francisco. i like to have conversations with business people of all types, and it fascinates me that yelp is changing the fabric of small business. so yes... when i meet a restaurant owner i do ask them what they think of yelp. actually, a lot times they ask me, "how did you find us?" maybe i'm just too friendly or inquisitive?
full disclosure: i do have a friend and some acquaintances that work at yelp. running a startup in sf it's hard to not be connected to other startups in this city in some way shape or form.
3. i should have made this more clear, but i was speaking of jwz's "stuff" being baseless. it was 4am when i wrote that post so forgive me.
going through jwz's complaints he's essentially saying the reviewers are idiots. yeah, some are! so what! some people are idiots in real life too. the funny thing is it seems like yelp has spawned some healthy conversation about dna's bathrooms, specifically how much girls detest them for not having seats on the toilets (true).
extortion claims? granted if you don't agree with #1 then you may see direct sales as extortion, but i tend to believe it's not. i've never received a call myself so i'll reserve judgement until i do :)
Yeah this sort of direct sales may be good for yelp and good for businesses who participate. The point is its bad for USERS of the site, who many of us are. If true, then seeing no bad reviews, or a bunch of good reviews might be meaningless, so useless.
the favorite review is clearly marked. seriously - if the claims of reviews disappearing maliciously are true then sure let's hang yelp from the gallows. i do know for a fact that they're quite aggressive about anti-spam for being such a large site.
the fact is they've had such a positive effect on my life that i'm willing to actually hear the other side.
I agree. I've never gone to any place on Yelp's recommendation that was disappointing or grossly out of step with what the general review consensus was.
So shenanigans or not, IMHO Yelp is still a valuable resource.
I too don't really see a problem with a clearly marked, "highlighted" review. If Yelp is dropping bad reviews in exchange for sponsorship (or worse, writing fake bad reviews), I would take issue.
In this case, it's because you seemed to argue that it's okay that this review site lets businesses control what reviews you see. HN is a teensy bit kneejerk, and your argument as stated there is flimsy, though you clarified yourself below.
I feel extremely sad that you can't relate to how the actions of yelp are - at best - unethical business practices and - at worst - plain old extortion.
