There are a few expectations most users of peer reviewed sites have about fairness and trust - one of them being that peer reviewed sites are indeed peer reviewed, and not subject to foul play of favoritism by the host site.
The whole point of peer reviews was to democratize the review process, removing the elitist foodie perspective or musical bias of reviewers - creating a review environment for the people by the people.
That sounds great, now where did Yelp stray from the path? They allegedly were offering to minimize negative reviews to small business by a filtering process, although they claimed that was not the case. I can attest to being solicited over the phone by a an eager sales person - but I know other business owners who have been strong armed. Whether this was Yelp's practice or some rogue sales tactics I don't know - but the practice was rampant enough to create some negative buzz, a death knell for any social media based business.
I handled this disappointment with Yelp in the social media manner, by giving Yelp a negative review on their own site. My review was book ended by two others, both from the Better Business Bureau. This solicited a personalized e-mail from Yelp, asking me to reconsider my review. The beauty of social media is this two way conversation can actually happen. Once your brand belongs truly to the people who care and use it, then the conversation is out of corporate control, the good and the bad.
Yelp was able to pull themselves out of the mud, and apparently ditch the filtering review system after their users complained. Time will tell if they will be able to regain trust and adequately monetize the site using fair tactics that don't depreciate the brand. I will still use the service to find other local services, but will be more cautious about the process. I think Yelp should be able to monetize the community they facilitated, but I would like them to do it fairly.
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