Paul Fleming » Web 2.0

Yelp Seems to Need Help

flemo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:56:00 +0000

I’ve been a longtime Yelper, since its inception actually and was happy to be part of a system that grew quickly and demonstrated a new way of thinking for people and businesses. Even taking into account the “masses are asses” and fake reviews, you could always get a sense for a place based on majority. I’d often read a few posts before making a dining choice and then happily post mine once all was said and done. A pleasant little arrangement I thought.

Then I started noticing things. I didn’t really give it a great deal of concern but I discovered that several of my reviews weren’t showing up. At first I thought it might have been at the request of the establishment I had reviewed but some were negative and some were positive so that didn’t make sense. I had also by this stage, been running a couple of paid client yelp accounts (against my wishes mind you) and I asked to remove some negative reviews which they didn’t do so I figured that wasn’t the case. (FWIW I didn’t really want them to remove them, I was merely probing). So it turns out to be Yelp’s review filter that is responsible for the disappearing reviews. OK well I’m sure they’ll be working on that problem (it still exists).

So earlier I told you that I took over management of a couple of sponsored accounts, the ones that just allow you to do a little more with your account like add a slideshow and special announcements and directly contact reviewers and it didn’t take long for me to realize these were next to useless, especially considering the $300 – $750 they were charging. There’s also the option where your ad will appear on other listings which is ridiculously based on impressions rather than clicks and as such, was a lot more expensive. I also learned that the clients were locked into an annual agreement so we had to wait until it ran out. The results were very ordinary too. One of the accounts averaged 15 visitors to the website from Yelp with 0 conversions, the other did generate a good amount of traffic to their site but about the same as before the “sponsored” account making their $3600 a pretty poor investment.

And now the latest is that I’ve been watching a client listing lose good reviews due to the “review filter” to be told that they didn’t feel the reviews to be genuine and meanwhile a competitor quite obviously has his own review (including his picture and name) on his own listing. It was flagged a while ago but it’s still there. One can only suspect they are paying for the privilege?

So I’ve gone cold on the service. They keep talking about transparency and changing options but I’m pretty much boycotting it and think they’ve screwed the pooch by not listening to the community earlier and creating some pretty ridiculous options for customers and businesses. I’m backing UrbanSpoon right now.

Zorba the Greek visits Elcho Island

flemo — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:17:14 +0000

This is a pretty cool little video clip from a very remote island off the Northern Territory.

I’m an Internet Person

flemo — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:57:39 +0000

I’m pretty sure I can place all the references in the video. Very clever stuff from Dan Meth et al.

Color me Yellow

flemo — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:44:35 +0000

With the new Simpsons movie out and about, the folks at Burger King have another viral activity to amuse us (and spread the word). Of course we remember the Subservient Chicken doing the rounds in email inboxes as well as the Sith Sense. The latest one, Simpsonize Me has folks uploading images of themselves to be converted into Simpsons characters. Here are my attempts.

This is the image I uploaded (I know, scary).

This was their first attempt. Not bad but the long hair might be a bit of a stretch.

This is the second attempt. Probably more accurate. Nice touch with the hawaiian shirt.
Look for the flemo character in upcoming episodes as Homer’s beer-swilling Aussie sidekick.

Web Crash 2007

flemo — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:50:04 +0000

Geeks will appreciate this one.

A Wag in the Valley

flemo — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 11:45:40 +0000

There’s a stir amongst the online kingpins created by Valleywag in accusing the likes of Mike Arrington of Techcrunch, Om Malik of Giga Om with John Battelle of Federated Media right in the middle. In a nutshell, we have an online advertising campaign created by Federated Media for the Microsoft People Ready system/service/software (still a little obscure in my books), with some of the big names in the tech blogging world offering (being pay for) their support of the Federated Media campaign. So now we have Om Malik asking to be pulled from the campaign and many folks questioning the integrity of Arrington et. al.

It’s really not surprising, those who follow the top blogs closely are quite aware that some dodgy behaviors happen behind the scenes…it seems only Om is willing to step forward in this instance.

Cha Cha

flemo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:28:16 +0000

We review this new search engine briefly on this week’s show. An interesting concept that acts more like Yahoo! Answers than Google but sure enough, it works.

“A new internet search engine, ChaCha, has hit the web, promising results more relevant than even Google.While Google relies on highly complex algorithms to give responses to queries, ChaCha, in addition to a traditional computer-based search, provides the option of having a human guide assist with any query.According to one of the human “guides”, LindaS, there are thousands like her online at all hours of the day, each working from home.”

Human-powered search engine launches – web – Technology – smh.com.au