There probably isn't a single business owner out there that feels comfortable with the existence of an online directory where disgruntled customers can collate and publish their opinions. I'm sure a good deal of them are willing to lie to rid themselves of the nuisance. Just because Yelp is creates a large headache for lazy business owners doesn't mean it's evil. It's creating an environment where business strive to provide quality service. It does so by creating incentives for doing so (good reviews) and disincentives for failing to do so (bad reviews).
There are no facts in this article. Just allegations.
There are also incentives to disgruntled employees (for example) to publish bad reviews to 'get back' at the business. In general, services like this are only useful once they reach a critical mass so that the signal drowns the noise. But as you grow you also become the target of spammers (i.e. Google's problems with SEO, real estate scammers, link farms, etc).
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There probably isn't a single business owner out there that feels comfortable with the existence of an online directory where disgruntled customers can collate and publish their opinions. I'm sure a good deal of them are willing to lie to rid themselves of the nuisance. Just because Yelp is creates a large headache for lazy business owners doesn't mean it's evil. It's creating an environment where business strive to provide quality service. It does so by creating incentives for doing so (good reviews) and disincentives for failing to do so (bad reviews).
There are no facts in this article. Just allegations.
There are also incentives to disgruntled employees (for example) to publish bad reviews to 'get back' at the business. In general, services like this are only useful once they reach a critical mass so that the signal drowns the noise. But as you grow you also become the target of spammers (i.e. Google's problems with SEO, real estate scammers, link farms, etc).