HHotelConsult hoping to make sense of his brainpan’s thoughts, rambles, ambles, and more. Hotel Industry banter, social media thoughts, and general blather.
Enjoy the TechCrunch article… and always, always, always enjoy the commentary. I find it interesting if not hilarious. If it isn’t hilarious enough for you, check out the comment section of this blog post, where it basically proves Facebook users are clueless (or 4chan had a blast acting like a mischievous army, once again).
Yelp seems to be taking this situation seriously though; umm….enough to post a Craigslist ad for legal counsel. I would imagine there are better ways to hire lawyers than CL, but hey, just says a lot about the management that got them into this mess.
But these cries of extortion… once again… are more about bad management than out and out unethical behaviour. There is no way these suits will be able to prove the “WE WILL DELETE A REVIEW FOR YOU” concept, because I don’t think it has ever happened; if it has, I doubt anyone has gotten a record of it as fact. Someone would have proof by now… a recorded call, etc. Admittedly, these guys at Yelp are from Paypal, and they know not to be sending privy or damaging info across email, etc…. but I still doubt something like that is going on. It’s more likely confusion on the level of businesses not getting what is happening with the algorithm, as well as the dubious (but not out and out unethical) “move the best review to the top” program, that seems to confuse a lot of people. This is more about business owner’s lack of understanding about social media, and Yelp’s apparent incapacity to clarify just how their algorithm works.
Using the algorithm as an excuse is not a wise move – blaming the foundation of their business opens them up to scrutiny. By blaming the process of your sorting model, there will be more curiosity as to how it works. Until people can trust that algorithm without question, their entire model will be extremely unstable. Regardless of proprietary, privileged information, it jeopardizes their ability to be viable and dealt with as ethical business people. Of course, the bungled Google deal and whatever really happened there (it’s all speculation) might offer a small window into their world. Theories abound that Yelp was lying to Google, leaking information, and fabricating higher offers from unnamed suitors. Yelp walking on this deal doesn’t make as much sense as Google calling their bluff, but logic doesn’t always figure into business dealings. All in all… Google knows how to negotiate, and they were “rattled” by Yelp’s lack of transparency…. seemingly a theme for Yelp.
All they need to do is be open about their algorithm, and it will bolster and gel their business model. I am sure there would be growing pains with being that open, but it would pave the way to have a stronger, vetted business that actually has trust from other people. Until then, their algorithm nonsense will be the blood in the water that keeps the sharks (lawyers & lawsuits) coming back…
As the solution to their issues seem obvious, it starts to beg the question whether Yelp really has something to hide. Without being conspiratorial, it isn’t that much of a logical leap that they are concerned about *something* – whether there are significant flaws in the algorithm, or they have work arounds that allow you to disregard specific aspects of it. Frankly I don’t like conspiracy theories; people are typically not intelligent enough to orchestrate massive lies involving endless people that agree to keep secrets without being morally challenged. Our government can’t, big businesses can’t…. why should a web 2.0 startup be able to get this far? If moralistic heart strings being tugged isn’t enough, money talks… and one of the employees would have blown the whistle for their future book deal and fame, at this point.
However, if they ever get caught jockeying reviews under the guise of their algorithmic mistakes, Yelp will be *decimated*…. but I can’t imagine that ever happening. What might happen is that serious flaws in the algorithm get noted, and short term it will seriously hurt them. Depending on how they handle this fictional problem, it won’t likely be a Yelp killer. However, watching Toyota deal with public fallout, it never ceases to amaze me how business’ often choose to ignore history and good sense. What’s more, Yelp is a leader in flipping the marketing model and giving consumers a voice, taking a business’ ability to control damage with PR and spin. Yelp is acting exactly like the companies that they are helping expose… you can’t be secretive, you can’t market your mistakes away…. if any business should understand this, it’s Yelp. If you aren’t ethical, or don’t operate with the best of intentions… the public has ways of exposing that. It’s humorous, and possibly ironic, that Yelp is caught in a trap of their own making.
I love seeing unethical people getting brought down, but I just don’t see this as mitigated behavior so much as foolish bungling, something I touched on before in this article.
People who don’t understand what Yelp is offering endlessly cry about the review site’s shifty ways… but Yelp’s program for advertising isn’t that nebulous. The $300, $500, $1000 plans get you “impressions”…. those lightly highlighted/colored ads at the top of searches on yelp. You also get a “slideshow” style picture gallery which is pretty meaningless, and you get to pick your favorite review to automatically appear at the top. It says, “this is the company’s favorite review” and it’s fairly obvious when people are sponsors. Most of the worthwhile aspects of managing the business owners accounts on yelp have nothing to do with their advertising options, by the way. It is a valuable tool and can help you listen, learn and grow…. but you don’t need to pay yelp for any real reason. For most businesses I doubt it makes sense at all; I don’t get it for a flower shop or bakery, etc…. there is no return on investment, so those constant calls they must be getting are annoying, to be sure. But I still don’t think there is some devious plot going on…. I have spoken to at least 5 different account managers in different markets who try to get me to advertise, and none have pulled any unethical behavior beyond being ENDLESSLY annoying.
I still prefer google adwords, but if you are already doing those it might not be a bad idea, depending on your business. Think about it from a hotel’s perspective – If I choose to pay $1000 a month from our marketing budget (which has moved online from print media), that means I get something like 4800 impressions (aka a banner ad that a consumer may or may not see due to “banner blindness”… I mean, I don’t see those ads at all, frankly). If our average daily rate is $500, that means I literally have to pluck one person for two nights out of the 4800 impressions to cover the cost of advertising with yelp. It actually is sort of a slam dunk, in that sense.
I just can’t convince old school marketers who are scared of losing the message, and not controlling the brand, due to sites like this. What’s more, Yelp is only successful in SF Bay and a couple other markets.. barely. Boston, LA, Chicago, NY seem to be okay… but even social media savvy Portland and Seattle aren’t that strong a market at all.
Look at open table reviews vs. yelp reviews in other markets…. opentable reviews which are verified and confirmed from a reservation are much more common than yelp reviews outside of the SF market. One of our fine dining restaurants in the Portland area has 2 reviews on yelp, and over 200 on open table. That speaks volumes.
But in the end…. it’s all bad press, and it douses their equity every time this happens. I can’t help but wonder why they allow this to continue unabated?
Social media is supposed to be about transparency and Yelp is failing at that…. massively. Everyone thinks Yelp is some immutable, immovable behemoth, but people moved from Myspace to Facebook in less than a couple months. Youtube is less than 5 years old, and Facebook is less than 3 1/2 years old.. Yelp needs to recognize that their high horse isn’t that high. The basic upshot is that this is all very young. I think it’s interesting tho… all of it… which is why I am rambling here to all of you. This will all be sorted out within a couple years, I am sure.
Do you guys think this is more about confusion from the companies themselves, or do you really think yelp is committing some expertly maintained conspiracy? What are your thoughts on the future of online reviewing?
An impressive LEED Platinum for a hotel, Napa’s Bardessono. I would like to take the time to point out that the incredibly complex reuse project from the NPS and ECB/Fort Baker Retreat Group, Cavallo Point, was just awarded LEED Gold. Being NPS land, historic buildings, and completely “green” presented an interesting array of problems (aka opportunities), and I am happy to say 2 years after opening it’s doors, it has finally received it’s status. It is a shining light for the Bay Area, a stunning addition to the National Parks and GGNRA, and a model for future development being ethical and about sustainability. I applaud both these properties, especially knowing how complex the LEED process can be!
This is sort of scary, but nothing new to our industry: Hotel industry needs flexible graduates. “Skeleton staffs don’t bode well for hospitality students preparing to enter the market today. As if the long hours and weekends shifts in the hospitality industry weren’t unattractive enough, students entering the job world in today’s economy are forced to be more flexible than ever, often taking jobs outside of their geographical preference and much lower on the corporate ladder than they had hoped.” Honestly – if I had known the hours I was going to work prior to starting my career in hospitality, I don’t know if I could have done it. Of all the things I have dealt with in my life, the hours as manager at every property were dehumanizing and exacerbating. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it for over a decade. But that is what our industry is… high pressure, fast paced, grueling grinds, and the self delusion that it is as important as saving lives and that it will all be better tomorrow – oh, and that “lateral promotion” you took to get out of the department you are currently pigeonholed in… was totally worth it. (a little cynical humor, of course – not at all from my career. Riiiiiiiiiiight).
Why do hotels have so much trouble answering emails? This is an epic, well timed, post. It’s a HUGE problem, and not enough companies have corporate policies. It becomes a disaster for communication if people think they can reach you, but have zero real access to you. It makes our industry look bad, and it has to stop. On the up side…. if you make it a priority to reply to emails, and it becomes everyone’s priority, maybe they will slow down with better communication. More phone calls, less emails (including those horrible passive ones hiding the real question of “why haven’t you answered my emails?) – but that might just be wishful thinking.
Hotels converting F&B space into meeting space. A lot of hotels are looking for revenue, and this was an actual conversation we had with a client in the last couple weeks…. nice to see the article agreeing with us. Lounges and comfy spots don’t generate revenue – but meeting space does.
Augmented Reality is buzzed about for a reason… and not just because it is PHENOMENALLY AWESOME. But it may actually create business, even for small businesses.
Is geolocating the future of hotel marketing? I love that hyperbole, I really do… but let’s just leave it at “a really important, impacting development” before waving the white flag at all other types of marketing. I actually think it is… for one, there’s FourSquare. But I don’t like getting *too* carried away. =)
Foursquare does have some strategic growth; First Zagat, then Chicago. Some pretty big stuff happening, and it makes me excited that with all this activity, and other industry people cloning their format in multiple ways, Foursquare seems aware and fluid enough with a solid enough business acumen, to withstand the turbulence in this crowded arena. They seem smart, and I think you need to keep an eye on them. If you haven’t gotten a google alert from them about someone “checking in” to your hotel or business, trust me… you will.
The future of marketing in hotels? This is a tech guy with idealistic notions of what hospitality *COULD* do – with money, foresight, more labor, and planning. It’s a good idea, some luxury brands might try to get there with this as a gimmick, to start….. but interesting and enthusiastic read nonetheless. Beyond that, I liked the idea… and don’t mind plugging him. He has got to be one of the only people out there that I know building Iphone (and I assume Android as well) apps that has even the most rudimentary understanding of the hotel business. A lot of people are yapping about apps in our industry…. we might not be able to afford one, but for those that moved enough of your 2009 marketing budget online, and have a bit to spare…. check him out.
An interesting blog about the development of social media in the Kenyan hotel industry, and can possibly be extrapolated to other small inns and boutique properties that don’t have the monster marketing budget, but know there is an audience to reach.
The UK heats up about online hotel reviews, looking for some sort of validation process for Tripadvisor. Is this another aspect of GPS & Geolocation that could help curtail fraud and shill reviewing? Whatever the case, I think the industry can handle itself…. it’s in their best interests. Getting the government involved to regulate seems a bit much. The only winner when you start legal proceedings are the lawyers. Very few other people actually win besides them.
Social media as customer service for hotels. Thank you for not saying social media as a way “to sell” or “drive revenue”. Social Media may have a valid ROI, but this is more about being a cost of operations than a revenue stream. We can all drive revenue with it…. but it is simply more important to *ENGAGE*. Because in the end, ignoring it will cost you.
Here’s an odd piece – great thoughts… horrible grammar. I didn’t understand this, so I include it to see if you have any thoughts?
That’s it! Just thoughts and links and interesting stuff! A real post is coming soon, I promise!
A professional acquaintance and I were communicating today about the odd nature of social media in regards to “friending”, and navigating the tightrope that is personal and professional. Social Media and Online Communication are still very young, and it is still learning to become the “metaverse” Stephenson conjectured, or at least fantastical replication of the physical world. As it starts to more accurately and efficiently replicate tangible existence, we will see a new vision of a social platform – something that is capable of being augmented, and adapatable enough for the most diverse of us. For now, we have the frustrating complexity of navigating our professional selves, and awkwardly surrendering our personal lives in lieu of building a professional network.
The question she asked was “How do you decide who to friend when someone finds your profile off of the page you administer?”
This is, truly, a billion dollar question. The online world is slowly revealing itself to be a simulacrum of the real world…. whereas MySpace’s vague and anonymous profiles caused confusion and apprehension, FB verification process through jobs and schools creates a more acceptable legitimacy in regards to the “realness” of a person. If the person tried to build a “fake” profile, it would sort of become irrelevant because there were no real world connections to make. That poses a problem for the more diverse of us. I note Twitter facilitates the need to compartmentalize interests, hobbies, characters, etc…. I have multiple twitter accounts – one for my music and DJ’ing, one for art and science, one for biz, and so on. The nature of communication is that we compartmentalize these interests, so we aren’t talking about the new museum to a hotel person, or the renovation of a hotel to someone who like to listen to music. It’s vital – it’s who we are, and how we do biz. At the very least, there needs to be a separation of professional life and work life.
This is where FB really lets me down. Originally I had two profiles… my main normal one professionally (networking and managing pages), and a goofy one for all my closer friends, music/art/SF scene friends. I soon realized it is literally impossible to juggle between the two accounts, let my alt-profile go dormant, and now I am simply an open book on my main profile. I use it however I wish, post whatever I wish… all the while accepting professional peers as friends. If they like my personal stream, that is fine – if not, they will unfriend. But I note, for my own mental sanity, that I couldn’t possibly keep up to speed with trying to maintain two FB profiles, all the FB pages… and figuring out what interaction happened where.
So I ditched that alternate profile, and it has been incredibly freeing. 1) FB is not like twitter… it is a closed social network. What is odd about that is that people don’t seem to want a closed social network in regards to their friends… because they will simply call and chat with them, see them at work or dinner, etc. People want an open network like twitter, for sharing funny stuff, professional networking, etc. So I note a lot of people on FB have just become friend junkies and will say yes to whoever might want to be their friend, simply to expand the network and ability for meaningful interaction.
I doubt you insulted anyone… most likely it is another Oregon local just trying to expand their network.
Whatever the case… this is a widely spoken about… you are not alone. I think Twitter “gets it”, and Linked In sort of gets it. There isn’t that much interaction there, but it is a valuable tool in conjunction with FB, at this point.
However, I think someone is going to soon create a tool/medium that allows you to truly compartmentalize these personna…. and create alternate profiles, conversations, etc within one network. The person that figures out how I can post some inappropriately irreverent and sardonic nonsense on one part of my profile, and professional news and tidbits on another, while posting a video or new mix on my other “side” – that person is going to make a lot of money.
Google Wave could be a start to this. I just realized something… Facebook would be able to adapt to this, but I am not innovative enough to figure out how Twitter to handle this sort of shift in friend management. Whatever the case, pardon my afternoon verbosity. The sun is hitting the office window and for some reason I just caught fire. =)
The rest that is cut off (hey I am a hotel guy, not a HTML guy) says “($42/month), would you?” You can take the survey yourself right here: TripAdvisor Survey for Owners.
I will let the pic speak for itself. I know it’s just a survey, but I assume some people might have a concern in regards to this? How about: mom and pops, small innkeepers, non branded or flagged properties that don’t have a mega-marketing budget to leverage every site, and I could go on. I know it’s only $500, but it adds up…. and if they were to really go through with this I assume it would be irrevocably damaging to their long term credibility. Even Yelp has tiptoed around ethics issues with business owners, review manipulation, etc – but haven’t done something this obvious. Of course, the question is: In their quest to monetize, will TripAdvisor risk their credibility to do so?
Any thoughts? Is it that big a deal? Would it create an unfair gap between “haves” and “have nots”, or is TripAdvisor supplying link and phone info moot, because guests will call the hotel directly anyway?
Once again, Hotels Mag & Mr. Hartesvelt have come up with an interesting piece… this time in regards to “Random Acts of Marketing” and hotels PR people being a bit beleaguered in these times, and acting out accordingly. I, once again, had too long a blog response and note that the comments section isn’t always the best place for banter… or at least I have trouble posting there at times. In preparation of that, I linked the article above…. and put my own thoughts here just in case.
The best marketers are skeptics or operators that turned into marketers… because marketing has been a land of long lunches, little data, & arcane, questionable demonstrable results…. ALWAYS. When times are good, the greased cogs and gears tick forward inevitably… often unnoticed (for good or bad). In a down economy they just become a little more visible because of their obvious lack of connection or understanding of operations, budgets, etc. There are some STUNNING marketing firms out there (a little plug for BMC.. the guys are so incredibly together it is refreshing, and astonishing)… and most of those are the ones big enough to admit 1) we are undergoing some major changes, and 2) we have little to no idea what is happening for the time being. At least… if not hyperbolic relatively based in truth.
“New” marketers talk about getting back in synch, like the old system…. where, apparently, print media showed results.
Frankly.. I am not sure it ever did, and hopefully this new wave of social tools democratizing the guest experience will force the hand of marketing people to stop convincing their consumers that the brand is good…. and instead just focus on “gooding” the brand; making sure the hotel or entity is ethically orchestrating business in a way that will have consumers actively endorse their model and passively advocate it.
It isn’t about convincing people that a product is exceptional. It’s being exceptional and allowing people to recognize that. That doesn’t take place with marketing or PR… that takes place from within operations and management. Run a business well.. *then* hand it to marketers. They might begrudgingly thank you that you just made their job easier. More and more I see marketers admit with defeat that the message is no longer controllable…. and many don’t have a clue what’s going on.
But don’t worry marketer, most of the industry and business world is that way. That’s what happens when consumers gain control for the first time in history.
This is a fairly funny, interesting article about the complexity of social ads, and how they can exploit any of your proprietary data for their own ends…. in that you agree it isn’t proprietary anymore by uploading it to the site. IE: Complain all you want, but if you are on a social media site, they own you. Some try to be fairly deferential to the artist’s rights (Flickr, Tribe, etc), but others like Yelp and Facebook seem to have little concern for their single users, and are wholly concerned with users overall (read: business).
That being said, have you heard about any of these wildly incorrect or funny social ad gaffes?
Husband sees his own wife in a picture for “hot singles”.
Karen said: “Despite having three degrees and no children, I keep getting ads urging ‘Moms’ to ‘go back to school and earn a degree.’”
Rachel said, “none of my friends have come up in dating ads but one of my guy friends – a 20 something with perfect skin, popped up in an ad for a wrinkle cream”
“I saw a Facebook ad that read “Pinecones. In glass. The want is real.” They were advertising just that — pinecones in glass jars. Very odd.”
[The following, I assume, was for a dating ad?] “My picture was posted in an ad for my sister, who then posted a comment in her status on FB, and everyone got to share a great laugh – after a collective: Ewwwww. Cheers!”
“Best one so far was a picture of our church’s pastor next to an ad asking my wife if she were hot enough to be in his sorority!”
These are hilarious… but somewhat frightening. If you use FB, or most of these sites…. you should simply consider privacy over. Don’t give up on it, but don’t act shocked. At least, have a great sense of humour like Cheryl did on her original post. The fact is – social media is young, and growing. This will all get hammered out, and someday there will be parity and the new model will synch up. Until then, please share the weird, wild, or funny things you see or hear about on social media ads! Cheers!
Mr. Kirby from Hotels Magazine has written a great piece about @hiltonsuggests and their new model of using twitter. In light of that, the massive amount of new twitterers/followers since my posts about the development of an “e-concierge / Concierge 2.0″ role, as well as how to effectively establish and utilize your brand using the tool of social media… I thought I would expand a bit and touch on it again.
It is exciting to see brands establishing themselves as I had envisioned… not vapid spam marketing, but being leaders in helping guests. Hospitality is the name of the game, and the only way to build your brand isn’t to market it, so much as effectively position it, with deference to your guests and not your marketing department.
Kirby’s post talks about active searching for guests, instead of the passive approach; letting them come to you. Albeit a massive undertaking for a flag like Hilton, it will also be incredible effective. I have been doing this for a couple years, and it really works. If you are a property with hot springs… search hot springs. If you are a property in a wine growing region with fine dining… I think you get it. Fact is, this is INCREDIBLY time consuming, and I have backed off of it a little in need of positioning and building the social media presence for a number of clients… but there should be a point I am back to having the time to filter through aggressive wide netting of google alerts, backtype, twitter search, and other RSS’. In fact, I think I totally melted down at one point through a blog post, as noted here.
In fact… the following will start to really help you position your property on something like twitter:
1) Firmly commit yourself to the geography and history – know your story, know where you came from, and know what your offerings are, what makes you special.. and share it!
2) Ingratiate yourself to the community – share city and county wide news, events, stories, photos, etc. Celebrate the Juniour Varsity going to state, or the new art gallery exhibit. People don’t often care about a hotel. They *do* care about what matters to *them*. If you share and come together over similar interests, you will start to matter to the social web. Become a leader in information about your surroundings and tap into people’s interests. It isn’t all about *you*. It isn’t about wanting to sell your rooms, talk about your rentals, or pitch your restaurant. If you are myopic enough to think only of yourself, you won’t be as relevant as if you represent yourself as part of a community. Don’t just offer a room rate, talk about what makes a room special – from the historic quirks to green room design. Instead of selling your bike rentals, talk about the incredible trails & picnic day trips in the area. If you have a nice restaurant, talk about all the local farms you buy from and the guests you have, instead of just putting a discount/special out there. If you have a spa, tell a story about one of the favourite therapists instead of just saying “1/2 off”. If you have meeting rooms to sell…. talk about one of the cool groups that came to the property and why they excited you. Involving more than just yourself will stimulate and open up conversation. Could I go on? Obviously… but I am assuming you are getting it. Social Media is *NOT* a print ad. It is a relationship, networking, and interaction. One sided, spam-like deal tweets will only help you get recognized long enough for the people to ignore you.
3) Build a culture and humanity around your property… not just a shallow marketing effort. You need to humanize and personalize your activities online. If you are nothing more than an RSS feed for your hotel, people will walk away. You need to show you are a real person… so wear your quirks and emotions on your sleeve. If you are an emotionless robot, people won’t notice you… but if your energy, personality, and even idiosyncrasies, show through… it will truly create a more meaningful and real experience for other users. If you play at the deferential professional being obsequious with no character… that will only reflect on your hotel in a negative light. You need to intone and create a sense of “soft and comfy beds”, rather than sterile hallways littered with emotionless automatons. Always be professional, but for criminy *BE REAL*!!!!
4) Then… after all this…. you become the Concierge 2.0. Help anyone and everyone REGARDLESS of whether they are utilizing or recognizing your brand. You cannot be so disingenuous that you will only engage people you think will bring you business. You have to cordially, professionally, and earnestly engage anyone and everyone. Not because you are trying to brand your hotel… but because you are a real service provider that is inherently interested in fulfilling guests, helping the community, and creating harmony in people’s lives. This isn’t advice…. this is a way of life.
Hospitality is about service, consistency, and making people happy. Don’t make it more complex than that…. Follow that as an ultimate guideline in creating your business online, as well as in the real world. You are there to stay open, pay your employees, and hopefully walk out with a little profit (someday). But the only thing that will keep you there is the community, and the community is filled with living and breathing people that need to be respected and treated with integrity… online and off. If you treat social media as a marketing tool, you are not only going to miss the point, you may actually damage your brand. But if you are real, engaging, enthusiastic, and humanize your property, you could become indispensable to the people and surroundings of your area.
Once again, I got carried away with a response to a blog post, and decided to expound on it. I am sure this counts as real business right?
Newsweek’s Budget Travel has a great article about TripAdvisor trying to deal with the long coming revelation that many of their users and reviews are not legitimate. This is, frankly, a huge blow to the site, and should pose a happy problem in it’s early adolescence as they deal with all the changes that come along with growing into adulthood. Frankly, I am thrilled that this may provoke User Generated Content sites to seek the same verification model other sites have.
At any rate, this is vital to all of us, and it recalls some of my previous post (which I seem to mention once or twice):
One scotch fueled evening my jocular side protruded a wee bit and I became a prankster. To be honest it wasn’t to learn the lesson I did, rather just good fun. I speak of the Ryan Air Twitter spoof of mine, which got considerable attention in traditional media (namely because Ryan Air claimed @ryanaironline was their account). It helped me realize that there is a grave concern for brands and trademarks, and both the businesses & social media sites should have a vested interest in a verification process of brands. There is a serious risk of hijacking and damaging people and businesses, with inauthentic people (or dim ones not realizing pranks and social media can go viral) damaging a brands reputation.
Social Media is young. FB beat out myspace because it is better at replicating and verifying the real world (although it can’t actually do anything more meaningful than provide a wonderful marketing data gathering opportunity for FB, coupled with a nice phonebook)… but it was verifying that the person was the *reality* based person, which quickly attracted people to it. If you aren’t relevant to any networks, or aren’t genuine… you quickly become invisible.
As user generated review sites follow a similar path, these things will stabilize. It is very young, and still in the myspace period of fake profiles and people… but as twitter adds verification services & FB starts considering verification due to trademark infringement issues with it’s new URL program: , it will be obvious for User Generated Content Sites to authenticate, across the board. I am not sure if open ID and attaching accounts to mobile phones is the simplest way, but if something doesn’t happen quick the sites will implode through sacrificing the only thing that makes their business model feasible. I am sure Tripadvisor has seen the start of accounts closing due to the breach in ethics.
We will wait until services like Yelp and TripAdvisor grow into the awareness of what they have created. People sardonically jest “the internet is serious business” when it comes to this sort of stuff. But it is. It isn’t just 2.0. It’s a massively powerful tool that completely reorients the consumer model, putting control into the hands of the people, and out of marketing and PR companies, possibly for the first time in capitalism’s history. The message can no longer be managed, and PR doesn’t work the same way anymore. You are only as strong as the advocates and endorsers that believe in your brand. Ethics is paramount.
The only way for these sites to continue their validity is by echoing the sentiment of their own taglines: Tripadvisor’s “get the truth… and go”, or Yelp’s “real reviews, real people”. If they commit to intelligently policing their own site by being completely transparent, authentic, accountable, and earnest, they should be able to emerge better than before.. They might need to take a huge dip in registered users, as well as delete a lot of existing content. This open and honest method of dealing with this situation will undoubtedly sacrifice trust in the short term, but it is the only way for a social media site to maintain the trust that they leverage for business.
It will hurt… but this is an opportunity for them to re-organize into a leaner and more valid site than ever before. Most people saw this coming. Let’s hope it isn’t something they try to spin away or ignore… instead of doing what is right and being honest, while doing everything they can to curb the problem.
I admit concern about the idea of having to hire non-revenue generating staff to handle the massive clean up project, and the fact the money simply might not be there to handle it. However, it is obvious they are quickly responding, like April Robb from Tripadvisor commenting to Christopher Elliott. I do like the warnings they put on some hotels, but it could be markedly arbitrary?
We’ll have to see.
Not sure what age social media is at right now, but it is certainly hitting a painful growth spurt.
Another “coffee break” post that has nothing to do with hotels, and is just waxing about the nature of tech, or being dorky, etc. So here ya go….
My friend was commenting about the contest, started 8th of June, giving away 30 iphones in 30 days. I was telling him, “It’s vaporware”. I know it’s has no place there, but I just adore saying it. I hear more silly arguments over vaporware comments, I just have to be part of it. Don’t get me started with “eminent domain”. I love it.
At any rate, Iphones won’t help me with my problems. AT&T isn’t helping any, either.
However, I did sort of experiment with my phone last week, on purpose, to prep for getting the Palm Pre. I just assumed I would be getting the Palm Pre, so I wanted to make sure by really maxing out my phone. After *despising* my HTC Touch Pro, I finally took the time (aka a day’s worth of functional productivity for my actual job) to tweak it and trick it out a bit with some .CAB files and registry edits. You have to, to get any real life out of the battery.
So, am I going to get a Pre? Noooo way….. dig this:
On my HTC Touch Po at a conference last week (Sustainable Brands 2009), for about an hour and a half:
1 ) I had a facebook ap open (searching the speakers, etc)
2 ) a GPS enabled google maps app w/latitude looking at others in attendance
3 ) a “Word” doc for writing full sentences that aren’t 140 characters
4 ) a twitter app for twittering the conference (hashtag #sb09)
5 ) my opera browser with two tabs open (twitter search, random searching)
6 ) my text messages chatting with others
7 ) my Picture Mail
8 ) I had stereo bluetooth music playing (in one ear… I know I know – But I *was* at a conference taking notes. I didn’t want to be rude)
9 ) while taking pictures of the event
10) while checking my email
11) *AND* using a calculator to do math on the concept of “slow money” and “nurture (vs venture) capitalism”..
That is 11 applications – all at once, with a full sized qwerty keyboard. Switching back and forth, while cutting and pasting.
The battery barely drained in an hour and a half, but I do have a spare to swap out just in case…..
That’s just insane. I am interested in what the Pre does, but for now I think I am fine with the Pro.
Like… whoah.
some of the conference pics: carboard computer kiosk / internet cafe (cool carboard chairs and all)
Basically… email has been around 40 years. Wave is a rebuild of the concept, building email as it would look with all the modern tools in today’s world. From our perspective, Wave is going to be perfect for hotels, eventually replacing outlook and slimming down on unnecessary meetings, facilitating real time business.
Watching the hour and twenty minutes was better than a sci-fi movie for a heavy eyelidded, scotch drinking, tired hotel dude. You might not have time, but in case you would actually like to know what these fractured notes are about, watch the embedded video (below)
This stuff is amazing. I took notes. I am a dork. They are incomplete, and possibly erroneous. They are certainly not words of a developer or programmer. But I hope they help, and at least save you an hour and seventeen minutes.
And yes, the smiley guy with sunglasses is really “8)” but I have decided to leave my numbered lists with a cute smiley guy. It seems fine to me. =)
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1) open source – they need support and help to complete
2) demonstration of what is possible in the browser
3) the brothers from google maps put this together
4) brand new api that we can have fun with
5) email mimics snail mail; wave is about conversation being a total shared object
6) modeled like bulletin boards
7) split message conversations.. replying in thread to emails allows for multiple messages within one email
instant messaging “see letters as you type” and you can switch back and forth from instant or email style typing
9) this allows you to have a live transmission, which means that you are always either reading or writing, with zero waiting. It speeds it up to real time conversation
10) drag and drop contacts and recipients – it eliminates the confusion adn cat and mouse games involved with catchup. They installed something called playback, which does a real time rewind of the messages as it happened
11) drag and drop desktop photos that appear on the other person’s computer before it uploads from the host computer. Drag and drop is the one part that HTML 5 can’t support yet. It’s the only part of wave you need gears downloaded for.
12) 1st category of API that allows you to embed waves onto your web page
13) one click bot to publish waves directly to blogs.. posting pics or text. Incredible.
14) creates a filter that allows you to have one client that tracks all online conversations, so you will no longer have to go to a
million different websites to update and track conversations. ”It will make flame wars that much more effective”.
15) mobile devices work incredibly well – real time updating and interaction
16) instant updating of editing -
17) real – time collaborative editing & in line discussion; multiple people can work on a doc at one time
18) playback power tools to review the history of the wave ; able to investigae and manipulate the history of the wave
19) powerful document production tool
20) more than one person can edit the message at the same time and the characters are lkive
21) supports multiple real time language translation between multiple languages simultaneously.
22) whole thing was built on google web toolkit
23) looking for a balance between speed and not being interrupted too often
24) spell checker takes context of word into account and compares to an enormous language model – it gets homonyms yeah the spell check is insanely awesome
25) link detector automatically links words that have relevance to a site – who wants to type links all day?
26) robots are powerful! yay!
27) any open social gadget can sit inside a wave
28) instead of threading messages, everyone edits a single email
29) they did a lot of it to build impossibly addictive games – collaborative or competitive real time chess or sudoko. Playback tool let’s you watch the whole game
30) you can use the API to proxy accounts, IE twitter, or whatever. You will see all the tweet people, regardless of being a wave account holder or not
31) *live* (no refresh) audience feedback on twitter through search on wave. search seems interesting, and captures entire threads, conversations, mentions, topics, etc.
32) protocols & algorithms – we want wave to work the same way as email… anyone could build their own wave users… even in competition with google.
33) a completely different google competitor has already built their own email system and use their own wave, while still being able to communicate across servers
34) cute office space joke with “Initech”
35) I think we are looking at a linux built code to use waves, in ASCII old school form. Crazy
36) rosie the robot does real time language translation from english to whatever… vice versa… amazing.
They “built a simple communication object”… that is mind blowing.
instant messaging “see letters as you type” and you can switch back and forth from instant or email style typing