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I find Yelp an interesting entity. While I admit, I do look at Yelp reviews of certain businesses before using them, I only take certain types of them seriously. This is mainly because Yelp seems to have taken on a sort of "clique" or unique writing style, I would describe as a generic, friend friendly blog. What I mean by "friend friendly" is how the reviews seem to cater toward telling your fellow Yelp friends about what you did that day, or a simple narrative of how your visit to said establishment went down. There are very few critic style reviews and a majority of dumbed down rants, seemingly designed to up your status on the site.
I think judging good photographers on there is very difficult, as negative reviews of them are few and far between. Most users would only take to the site to praise someone whose work they were really impressed with. Unless a wedding was botched or your kid came out looking like an alien, there really aren't too many reasons to get up and Yelp negative things about photographers. What is really missing are good technical reviews about the final work results, what prints they received, and at what prices. The reviews tend to remain on the lighter side such as "my friends all loved them".
I am not sure which type of reviews are worse: the positive or the negative ones. It seems one is more serious in their writing style when speaking negatively about something. It's no longer a tell my friend about my day speech, and becomes a patron genuinely upset about service(s) received.
One of my biggest pet peeves is how someone will "drag" someone else into the reviews. Such as "I ordered the ________ and my husband ordered the _______ and both of us were disgusted by the _________." You wouldn't see a review on a music site where someone says "I was listening to track 1 of this album and my friend was listening to track 4", so why feel the need to bring others into your review? This seems to be unique and isolated to Yelp.
My last rant about Yelp is how many reviewers seem to use the same generic critiquing phrases such as "veritable treasure trove", " needle in a haystack", and "a local staple". Just another clue to how unoriginal some of the writings are on the site.
One last note: I've often wondered about whether businesses attempt litigation if they feel negative reviews may hurt their business. I just saw an article today about how a Virginia court ruled that Yelp must reveal the identities of certain reviewers who negatively reviewed a carpet cleaning business. The ruling was along the lines of how the business had a right to know the names of these individuals, as they could find no records of any customers or sales transactions that resulted in the comments left on Yelp. Strange, because I'm sure many disgruntled customers are not the type to call the owner or business directly to complain about shoddy work, and outlets such as Yelp or the Better Businees Bureau website would be the place they can take their concern. Wow, this opens up a whole new discussion over free speech, but I'll end this blog right here.
I think judging good photographers on there is very difficult, as negative reviews of them are few and far between. Most users would only take to the site to praise someone whose work they were really impressed with. Unless a wedding was botched or your kid came out looking like an alien, there really aren't too many reasons to get up and Yelp negative things about photographers. What is really missing are good technical reviews about the final work results, what prints they received, and at what prices. The reviews tend to remain on the lighter side such as "my friends all loved them".
I am not sure which type of reviews are worse: the positive or the negative ones. It seems one is more serious in their writing style when speaking negatively about something. It's no longer a tell my friend about my day speech, and becomes a patron genuinely upset about service(s) received.
One of my biggest pet peeves is how someone will "drag" someone else into the reviews. Such as "I ordered the ________ and my husband ordered the _______ and both of us were disgusted by the _________." You wouldn't see a review on a music site where someone says "I was listening to track 1 of this album and my friend was listening to track 4", so why feel the need to bring others into your review? This seems to be unique and isolated to Yelp.
My last rant about Yelp is how many reviewers seem to use the same generic critiquing phrases such as "veritable treasure trove", " needle in a haystack", and "a local staple". Just another clue to how unoriginal some of the writings are on the site.
One last note: I've often wondered about whether businesses attempt litigation if they feel negative reviews may hurt their business. I just saw an article today about how a Virginia court ruled that Yelp must reveal the identities of certain reviewers who negatively reviewed a carpet cleaning business. The ruling was along the lines of how the business had a right to know the names of these individuals, as they could find no records of any customers or sales transactions that resulted in the comments left on Yelp. Strange, because I'm sure many disgruntled customers are not the type to call the owner or business directly to complain about shoddy work, and outlets such as Yelp or the Better Businees Bureau website would be the place they can take their concern. Wow, this opens up a whole new discussion over free speech, but I'll end this blog right here.
