Pay Per Yelp? Houston, We Have a Local Review Problem: Chicago, TOO?
UPDATE 10/10/07: Insider Chatter Started With Houston “Pay Per Yelp?” analysis, Wall Street Journal Follows With Chicago Yelp “Payola?” analysis noting “the price of a four star rating” for Dine restaurant, thanks to anonymous (not so) real Yelp Chicago “reviewers.” SEE BOTTOM OF STORY BELOW
9/27/07: Microsoft is hoping “local reviews” will help spur adoption of its new and improved Live Search.
REALITY CHECK: InsiderPages is now the “property” of Citysearch, Backfence was a $3 million dream turned nightmare, Judy’s Book changes its business stripes at will…YELP!
Is Yelp the hottest thing to happen to local? CEO Jeremy Stoppleman hails his startup as THE “ultimate city guide” and he gets plenty of media backup for his “ambitious plan top take over the local ads market.”
The core Yelp value proposition is “real people, real reviews.” How real, though, is the Yelp experience? Late last year, Stoppleman fired back at reports that Yelp was “paying people to Yelp,” asserting that Business Week “misrepresented Yelp’s marketing programs by insinuating that users often interact with paid shills and that is simply not the case.’
Yelp quickly yelps about any press coverage of the company that strays from its tightly controlled PR feel good messaging. “Believe the hype,” Yelp IS the “next big thing,” Yelp confidently asserts.
Nevertheless, Yelp does indeed appear to continue to be “paying people to Yelp”: Houston, we have a problem, a Yelp problem.
“Why don’t people in Houston use Yelp,” a Ms. Fayza E. posted at Yelp last June:
I really fail to understand it. Yelp is fantastic, and way more interactive than Citysearch. So what gives? Why don’t Houstonians use Yelp?
What gives with Fayza E.? Real Yelper? Paid Yelp staffer? Best of both worlds? She rallied last month:
We’re having our first Unofficial Houston Yelp Event!
Yelp is determined to turn Houston into a city of Yelpers, one way or another. The recent Yelp “help wanted” in Houston campaign solicited “marketing assistants with a flair for writing”:
If you are a great writer, if you love to blog and connect with others online, if you know Houston better than anyone else…WE’RE HIRING. We’re looking to hire a witty, humorous and intelligent Houston hipster who knowws the city inside and out. IS THIS YOU?
We’re now looking for a well-written, highly social and entrepreneurial Scout to grow our review base and community in Houston.
The “Marketing Assistant” job duties of its “Houston Scout” include:
Writing witty and insightful reviews of all the places you frequent,
Photographing your neighborhood businesses and adding these images to the site.
Yelp’s call out for a paid Houston Yelper appeared in Monster AND Pro Job Fair.
Along with Yelp’s ad for a “marketing assistant” Pro Job Fair features an ad for About .com paid “writers.”
Why Pro Job Fair? It posts “blogging jobs for bloggers” and is an “ideal” place for “companies looking for bloggers to hire.”
Yelp touts it offers a “competitive hourly wage” for “10-30 hours of weekly contribution.”
Fayza E. is apparently still not satsfied with Yelp’s Houston traction: She posted on Tuesday, “Reviews, reviews anyone?”
Yesterday, she lamented “nobody is popular in Houston,” in a plea for Houston Yelp reviews.
Pay Per Yelp to the Houston rescue? Perhaps Yelp needs to hire more “marketing assistants.”
Dine, a contemporary American restaurant in Chicago, has been open for less than two years. But on one popular Web site, it is already rated half a star shy of Charlie Trotter’s.
How did Dine garner such favorable reviews? One thing that probably didn’t hurt: It fed many of the reviewers free. Last August, Dine spent about $1,500 on an event for members of Yelp, a Web site where consumers post reviews and rate restaurants. The nearly 100 members were treated to an open bar, duck roulade appetizers and red velvet cupcakes for dessert. As a bonus, they all received certificates for discounts on subsequent meals. The result: a torrent of favorable reviews on Yelp. Most reviewers mentioned that they attended a Yelp event, though few highlighted that the food and drink was free.
I think if I was picking up the tab I wouldn’t enjoy it as much,” says Leigh Kelsey, a 28-year-old Chicago file clerk at a law firm who attended the event and posted positive comments on Yelp.
As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups.
While the integrity of the ”reviews” in both Yelp Chicago and Yelp Houston is open to analysis, the integrity of anonymous Yelp Chicago user behavior versus the integrity of anonymous Yelp Houston user behavior is not debatable, the Houston Yelp reacton to straightforward analysis of Yelp’s predeliction to pay “reviewers” without disclosure is juvenile, mean-spirited, self-absorbed tirades, while the Chicago Yelp reaction to straightforward analysis of Yelp’s predeliction to support under the table paid “sponsorship” of reviews without disclosure is productive, adult, respectful dismay at the purported unethical review process promoted by Yelp management.
Insider Chatter’s reporting of prospective unethical Yelp review processes in Houston, coupled with the Wall Street Journal’s reporting of prospective unethical Yelp review processes in Chicago, has done much more than shed sunlight on the veracity, OR NOT, of Yelps’s slogan: “Real people, real reviews.”
Yelp management’s support of virulent, anti-social behavior by anonymous Yelp Houston users on the Yelp system reveals Yelp for the unprofessional, unreliable, ill-behaved “user generated content” mouth off platform that it is.
UPDATE II, January 22, 2008: Yelp confirms Insider Chatter investigative reporting about Yelp, reported September 27, 2007. As of November 12, 2007, Yelp confirms:
We now have Fayza E. as our full-time Yelp “community manager” to lead the charge in Houston. As the CM in Houston, Fayza will be writing a “Weekly Yelp” newsletter (launching in January), putting together some parties for the emerging Yelp Elite squad in and around Houston, and generally getting the word out about Yelp throughout the 713, 281, and even the 832 and beyond.
Yelpers are estatic.