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I believe there's room in the local space for a service that combines check-ins with reviews. In other words, only real people, who've physically been to a give
by jonnathanson 15y ago
I believe there's room in the local space for a service that combines check-ins with reviews. In other words, only real people, who've physically been to a given restaurant, are able to review it. While you'd still suffer from selection-bias problems with this model, at least the self-selectors would be people with a propensity to try a lot of restaurants and review them -- not population-representative, perhaps, but at least dedicated to the task.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to game such a system. (You don't actually have to be at a restaurant to check into it, but you do need to be within a certain geographic radius -- so this would cut down on bogus or fraudulent reviews from people nowhere near the location). But those methods are harder to pull off, and they necessarily apply to a much smaller subset of potential gamers -- thereby making gaming a smaller-scale proposition.
Collaborative filtering would lend itself well to this model, too. Toss in some sort of karma system, as well, and you've got a check against system gaming and low-quality reviews.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoBelieving the device's idea of where it is isn't going to help against any kind of serious criminal (get root, hook API, profit; and what about people without smartphones, anyway?). Triangulating a phone via cell phone towers might work, but that opens a whole new can of worms: you need the carriers to cooperate; it's a privacy nightmare; conclusively linking a Yelp username to a physical SIM card is not easy; and so forth.
- jonnathanson 15y agoTrue, but at the very least, we're reducing the set of all possible fraudsters and system-gamers. How many of the fraudulent reviews on Yelp do we really believe are coming from fraudsters with this level of sophistication? My guess is that it's a pretty small percentage. Seems far more likely that most bogus reviews are coming from competitive small business owners, paid-off users, and other relatively average folk with a minimal level of technical understanding -- or even sufficient malice to drive them to become more sophisticated. (It doesn't help that Yelp may, or may not, be assigning greater weight to negative reviews unless/until a small business owner buys into their advertising).
- saucetenuto 15y agoI've only used OpenTable twice, but it seems to be the start of what you're describing. It bills itself as a way to easily make restaurant reservations from your computer or mobile phone...but after you've been, they invite you to review the place. I don't know if they see themselves as Yelp competitors, long-term, but I hope so.
- jonnathanson 15y agoI think OpenTable predates Yelp, actually. I might be wrong about that, but I remember having used OpenTable long before ever having seen Yelp. I didn't realize there was a review component to it. Good move on their part.