YELP IS INCREASING TRANSPARENCY

They are discontinuing the sponsored business listing “favorite review” feature which confuses the most complex of knuckleheads….. but they are also releasing their incredibly fault algorithm’s hold on hidden reviews. Instead of trying to *HELP* the user by engaging them with relevant, meaningful reviews, they are suspending the algorithm’s effort in hiding meaningless reviews. AKA – a whole bunch of shill positive or ridiculous negative reviews are going to pop up and appear on profiles; the funniest part is that business owners asked for it. Now people are going to be swamped and blindsided by a slur campaign or their old, mistaken reviews coming out of nowhere.

I think it’s interesting, in a lot of ways. It raises a lot of questions. One being:

Does this invalidate the contractual business agreement that yelp has with businesses?

I think what Yelp did was a smart move…. and if it didn’t save them from future semantic web issues, it will help usher in a simpler era where the USER has to be intelligent enough to engineer their own filtering process. I will actively pray that people aren’t so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between a helpful, earnest review vs. a rant or missive that has more to do with a blind date than the establishment.

But in the end, the real shake up isn’t for end users…. it’s for businesses. If you are a business that is a Yelp sponsor, you might want to ask what happens to your agreement, or sponsorship, once the changes take effect. I am not saying it was world altering, but having random reviews pop up before your chosen favorite might be a big deal for businesses that are honest.

If you are a Yelp business, I would love to hear if this is a concern for you?

If you are just a hospitality person, I would love to hear your thoughts. Basically, this is beyond the right move for yelp (like they might be reading my blog). But this will cause some short term road bumps to sponsorship that could help to implode the young 2.0 company not prepared for the openness of the 3.0 semantic web that everyone keeps referencing.

This is a huge decision for Yelp, and certainly a long term one.

Whatever their internal reasoning, the short term effects will be very important to pay attention to. If you don’t hear of this in the next couple days, Yelp very well might be getting to big to fail. If their management is able to make responsible and far sighted decisions like this, there’s no reason it should.

As for Ryan Air… they not only wouldn’t care… I doubt they would find this anything but funny. This isn’t about a PR machine… Ryan Air’s PR is a train wreck whether this account existed or not. It’s there style, and it is to be expected. The majority of research I unearthed from the past 48 hours suggested this was a brilliant PR stunt by Ryan Air. That, even to me, is hard to swallow.

It is comforting to know, for some, that if it wasn’t this specific spoof account, it would have been something else. The new marketing model allows much more consumer control than expected, to the point of potentially (momentarily) derailing a brand with one spoof account…

There are very few brands that are self aware or playful enough to calmly approach this situation. Think about how *any* other brand would have reacted to this? It would have been in grand fashion, and this would have splashed across the world’s papers in regards to PR, etc. This didn’t show up anywhere because, frankly, Ryan Air knows not to take itself, or social media, or life… too seriously.

That being said, I am sure the faux account holder was likely aware that the immediate to long term ramifications to the brand were slight if anything at all. That person, however, might not have realized how much a funny idea would unexpectedly take off.

This is simply satire that has crossed into the business realm. Not all comedy has a point, but much of it works on different levels than one might first notice.

Performance art takes many forms…. and *this* conversation on this page might be exactly where the “lunatic blogger” was going.. eh?

In the future some poor, innocent brand (possibly not having the same reflection as Ryan Air) will be hijacked (no pun intended) by a disgruntled client that intelligently lures people into thinking a blog, account, etc with social media is real. When it happens, it will be nowhere near as overt or obvious. But it will be a disaster.

As of now, Twitter has no real verification process, nor do “user generate review” sites. If you take a quick peek at TripAdvisor, any single human being can reply as management on behalf of an entire property, let alone slander hotels at casual whim. Almost any social site has this conundrum: “How to create verification or confirm validity of an account or review.” Some don’t care yet, but when the integrity and ethics of a site is constantly brought to attention (look at yelp in the past few weeks) they will soon take notice.

There is a transparency and accountability problem in social media. A huge one. Whether it is a fake celebrity account founded by a bored blogger, or a false review written by an angry merchant…. social media might have to reflect past it’s hipster social clubs and office fridges full of beer, and start thinking about how their product effects the world of brands, and how to start making headway with repairing the relationship that is starting to make brands weary.

I for one am thrilled to see the previous marketing paradigm shifting… with consumers having ultimate control instead of corporations splashing money at marketing campaigns or for PR spinning on damage. The message is no longer in control, and the brand is only as valid as the ethos and intent behind it. If you aren’t an ethical brand that someone identifies with and endorses, you are completely and totally irrelevant.

I assume the original dork that started this was simply having fun, but like much of social media…. what started as a fun idea turned into real business.

Hopefully something like this will start more conversations in regards to the lack of accountability in social media, and the dangerous way it might erode the trust of both users and brands.

That’s it. I wouldn’t mind ending with something witty or with some flare, but I am still sad to see @ryanaironline get booted so quick! whatever the case sorry to be some random interloper! I just found it all so interesting!

@uncleFishbits aka @hhotelconsult (yeah a personal and business account… everyone does it.  I worry about transparency so often I feel it might be necessary to mention forthrightly so you don’t think I am duplicitious)

Yelp definitely effects us… but how?  Are any of you innkeepers, B&B owners, operators, managers, managing groups using yelp, or a paying advertiser on the site??  I would love to hear all your stories… good and bad.

I will start with mine:

You know I am highly skeptical of social media, and I am markedly perturbed at the style of leadership and business management from the people in charge.  But what you don’t know is this:

I am a 1100+ reviewer on yelp.  I had been using it since it’s earlier startup days, and it just sort of became a food blog for me.  There was a momentary ethical crisis when I started working for businesses that exist on yelp, so I pulled back all hotel related reviews or any reviews that may have had a conflict of interest.  I comport myself of the highest ethics on the site.  I am also one of their biggest critics, and have not endeared myself to the site as a content generator.  But I love it, and think it is a fun way for me to relive experiences, and help me remember where I have been.

As for business side of things I can’t say much.  I think it is an invaluable tool to get real time feedback and ideas for improvements on service and the like.  It really has helped the properties I am involved with grow, and I think the bad reviews are better than the good ones.  It is just a new level of comment cards.  Nothing as quantified and rigorous as Market Metrix, but a very good pulse as to the state of the business, and what direction it is heading.

That being said, I think it is odd that I have had pleasant experiences both as a user, as well as a business person (my experiences with the sales agents are PHENOMENAL.  Period.  I like the people and they are solid.  Never one problem)….

But I still don’t trust the concept.  And that is the rub…. why wouldn’t we?  Is that we know too many of the bad reviews?  Is it the way they handle themselves in the public eye?  Do I have some bitter attitude towards them and bone to pick?  I honestly don’t know… as for the latter I highly doubt it.

I think it is that I love the site so much for personal reasons, and it is useful on so many levels for professional reasons, that I get panicked by the management practices (or lack there of).  I just want to see it succeed, and I don’t see any reason to believe it will.

I would love Yelp to look forward and stop focusing on damage control and PR.  They made it so you can’t manage your brand or control the message the same way you used to…. And it is important they become a transparent, openly ethical social media company.  Like the ethicist said, “Whether someone is lying or it is just confusion, yelp has a problem”.

So I want to hear your stories… problems, great stories, etc?  Let us have it!