WebProNews

Yelp Controversy Highlights Trouble With Consumer Reviews

This consumer review thing may need to be rethought. Like just about everything else that came out of the Web 2.0 movement, customer reviews of businesses are huge targets for abuse.

Everybody's a Critic

For years now, the blog has been viewed as a necessary evil from a PR perspective and a direct channel for bad news traveling at light speed. That’s a fair assessment, but the Internet should be viewed as a boon to another aspect of business: quality control. It used to be there were official critics and official criticisms were published in print, read by subset of subscribers to a specific publication. Now, critics are pretty much everywhere and can publish anywhere, any time.

Belkin’s Online Review Payola Plot Thickens

There it is again, you hear it? That’s the sound of consumer trust clinking against the sides of the shaft as it falls, down, down, down. Belkin is just the latest company to drop trust equity down the sewer.