Yelp, Revisited

Here she is again, beating the social network drum...

I am a regular poster on Yelp, an online site for reviewing businesses.  I post on Yelp despite that many of my fellow posters are half my age and despite the controversy of review manipulation to make numbers look better for some businesses over those of others.

My San Francisco Yelp experience (where the site began, too) has been mostly one-sided--the equivalent of a review in a bottle.  Once, someone acknowledged my review of a favorite burger joint and offered to make the experience better.  No one else in the Bay Area said boo, save for other reviewers who enjoyed my particular brand of scrutiny.

But San Diego County has been different.  Managers/owners are consistently checking their reviews, and listening to the voice of the customer with concern and gratitude.  The gratitude part comes from offering up the feedback in the first place--patrons in San Diego county tend to save their thoughts for FourSquare (a tracking device, for the most part, that can be activated on your phone), which isn’t that hard to believe, since Yelp doesn’t allow for review posting on its mobile edition.  You can save a draft of your review on your iPhone, but you have to go on like on a computer to publish that draft.  I have a feeling this gap in connectivity and the general lack of locked on cell phones here contribute to fewer reviews here.

I’m not picky...my favorite social media aspect is connectivity with others, and when that happens I’m happy enough.  When it happens with the business management, however, it takes on a feeling of having been heard.

Imagine...being heard by a business...so that you’ll go back...because that business seems to listen to you...

It’s not just a fairytale.