Yelpin' for a livin'

No, not really...

Oh, I suppose I should tell you what yelp (http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=WdmtsJOIkDjrDb2yhVsmbQ) is all about. It's a website that I've become totally addicted to over the course of the last week. Yelp bills itself as:

...the ultimate city guide that taps into the community's voice and reveals honest and current insights on local businesses and services on everything from martinis to mechanics... just real people, writing real reviews... and that's the real deal.

You see, I'm perpetually reliant on recommedations for good places to spend my time (as well as recommendations on places I should stay the hell away from!). Now, I used to use the Washington Post's entertainment section, but I eventually realized something. Most of the reviews were from people who were royally pissed off at a given business. That made me think, are these just squeaky wheels, or is it endemic of a larger problem with the establishment in question, and these two or three people bitching about it just happened to be the only ones wanting to make noise over it? Plus, I noticed that a goodly amount of reviews amounted to what marketers call "roach baiting" or stealth marketing.

Have you ever read product reviews on amazon.com? Have you ever noticed that some of those reviews seemed, well, a little too enthusiastic about the product? Like you think to yourself, this woman really loves her Swiffer, maybe a little too much. And have you read a review that looked more like a corporate press release? That's stealth marketing: some corporate tool creates an account on a website like amazon.com and reviews their own damn product, essentially filling the role of cheerleader.

With regard to the Washington Post, I noticed that this seemed to happen when they were getting ready to announce their "Best Bets," or whatever it is they call their best of the city rankings. Too many near-identical reviews that get posted right before the voting cutoff.

What I needed was a genuine source of information. And I found it in yelp. A few weeks ago, I decided that I'd really like to do something this summer besides spending it on my back (I mean in bed or on the couch... get your mind out of the gutter!). So I noticed I was relying more and more on yelp's reviews in constructing my list of things I should do this summer. And then I figured, if I'm relying on it so much (because it's useful), I should give something back to the service that's giving me the 411 on the local scene in the first place.

What prompted me to make my first post on yelp was that I noticed a local diner had an entry, and people were giving it really good reviews. And hey, I went to that same place a few weeks back. And you know what? It wasn't all that! I used to live in NJ for a few years, and they actually have more diners than any other state. So it's safe to say I know what passes for a diner, and this place wasn't up to snuff. I reasoned that the reason for such stellar reviews is that all the cool kids from Terre Haute and Des Moines working for Congressman Hugh Jass on the Hill don't know any better. So's I recon it's high time to school 'em in tha culinary artz.

And then, I started to get feedback. Several people tagged my post as "useful" or "cool." Now I'm hooked. I'm actually being acknowledged, and I'm actually influencing other people's opinions. So then I looked for local businesses in my zip code, found a few that I go to regularly, and started writing reviews: the grocery store, the place that used to always give me lousy haircuts, the whole nine. And I kept on getting at least one or two people flagging my posts saying it helped them.

So now, it's even encouraged me to write an entry for almost every place I visit, and it's really making me want to get out and start sampling many of the bars and restaurants that I've been compiling on my culinary "hit list," which will beget even further yelp reviews.

Now I'll admit, there still might be ways to trick out the yelp system, but I think those should be easy to pick out. You're encouraged to create your own personal profile, and I'm guessing a lot of bogus reviewers aren't going to bother with that. Also, if you scope their profile and they only wrote one or two reviews since their account was created, that's probably a good tipoff that they registered only to pitch their own business.

So my goal next week is to try O'Sullivan's (an Irish-esque pub in Arlington) and maybe Ri-Ra (ditto). I'm also planning on seeing Ratatouille over the weekend, and the only place near me that's playing it is one I absolutely cannot stand (in fact, it'd be the one place where I'd actually welcome someone to buy out the business and shit out a new condo over it). But no, I'm gonna go in with an open mind, and write an honest evaluation of that theater.

But I think I gotta premonition on how that's gonna turn out...

I can't wait!