I Get By With A Little Yelp From My Friends

As you can see from the screenshot above, I am a featured Yelper. The one review I’ve done (on The Gallery) clearly puts me in featured status.

I could not be any more flattered by this honor.

Thanks, Emily G

Other Cities’ Yelp Members Much Worse

Art from Foobooz sent this over a while ago, but I misplaced the link ’til now. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, restaurant owners in the Bay Area are upset over patrons demanding free food in exchange for good reviews on Yelp.

Yes, that’s right: People are blackmailing restaurants into giving them free shit. If the restaurants don’t comply, they’re threatened with a bad review on Yelp. Truly, we have entered into the final days. From an email from a restaurateur:

Customers have begun threatening to ‘Yelp’ the restaurant if their demands are not met. Cafe Rouge experienced this phenomenon twice within the past month when comps were demanded with the threat that a harsh review would follow on the Yelp website if we didn’t comply. The expectation of how much to comp is also at issue, where a glass of wine, an appetizer or dessert no longer suffices. People do follow through on their threats as we have witnessed. When most restaurants are struggling to pay the bills in a recession economy, bad publicity is the last thing we want to see. On the other hand, comping lavishly in response to overt threats affects the bottom line.

Hmm, I wonder if I could go into local restaurants and drop the words, “Philadelphia Will Do.” It would be awesome.

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I’m Never Writing About The Internet Again

Hey, so the Yelp drama has now expanded, with this Phillyist post all about me this week.

McQuade wrote, “If you give Yelp free drinks and promotion, you get great reviews on the site.” That’s not true. If you provide Yelp reviewers GOOD food and drinks (and good service), then you get positive reviews, regardless of whether it was free or the reviewers had to pay. A cursory reading of the myriad positive reviews of other establishments on the site clearly demonstrates this. Would he have taken issue with the reviews if the writers had been attending a corporate gathering (at which the food and drinks would also have been free to attendees) rather than a Yelp one?

Please note: I can’t imagine ever having to decide what my opinion is on those who review corporate parties on Yelp.

Perhaps it’s because the Elite moniker is offputting to some. Would commenters on PWD have been as harsh in their criticism of Yelp reviewers if Elite status was called something else, like “senior member”? At least one PWD commenter has written multiple negative, one-star reviews on Yelp, leaving us puzzled as to why he felt the need to complain about Yelp, its events and its members on this other site.

Is that a Chrissmari reference? (Enough for the oh-so-popular Chrissmari tag.) There’s constant hatred on her in the PWD comments!

McQuade himself is a yelper. He hasn’t contributed many reviews, though—and that’s a shame, because he’s a good writer and if he had, he probably would’ve been at the event in question and experienced the absurdity firsthand. Then perhaps instead of interpreting attendees’ reactions as elitist whining, he might realize that they were just offering honest opinions of their disappointing experience with this establishment, with a healthy dose of hyperbole and snark.

Man, I wish youse all cared about my column this much. In other news, the person in charge of Philadelphia Yelp asked everyone to just keep their reviews of Mexican Post on the site for the actual event, and Yelp yanked a bunch of phony reviews from (gasp!) businesses giving each other good write-ups.

Blogged Around Philly: Special Edition [Phillyist]
Image by ark, Creative Commons license

You Sunk My Social Networking Battleship

Step 1: Post about Yelp. Step 2: Realize that Philadelphia Will Do covert operative Chrissmari will most certainly post about it on Yelp. Step 3: Profit.

Someone on the PW blog called Yelpers out and, suddenly, there are arguments going on. In my time on Yelp, I haven’t seen any Philly Yelpers fight. I’m sorry to see that something as minor as a blog entry has caused tension.

Some guy also sent this to me as an email:

I speak for most Yelp Elite member when I say that we were all writing countless reviews (good and bad) well before we were invited to an Elite party that had free food and drinks. We care a lot about any reputation we’ve built. We don’t do it for money or free drinks. [...] I suppose you did your job and got a few more page views for your blog and got people talking. Maybe next time it’ll be for something a little more insightful.

Another user on the board wrote: “Meh, I’m not allowed to be an Elite Yelper since I am under 18, but I didn’t let this blog phase me.” Exactly. Out of the mouths of babes.

If smoking and Elite Yelping are both restricted until you’re 18, does that mean they both do the same amount of damage to your health?

Philadelphia Yelp in Philadelphia Weekly Blog [Yelp]

Elitists Whine About Lack Of Free Stuff

The other night, Yelp — a trendy Web. 2.0 review site — held an event at the Mexican Post near Love Park for its “Elite” users, a group no doubt infinitely cooler than me and my regular user status.

This was a dumb move, because Mexican Post sucks. And, as such, Mexican Post has now received a ton of angry reviews on Yelp from people at the event.

Their complaints, though, weren’t limited to the regular shittiness of Mexican Post. No, the main complaints from users were that Yelp users weren’t given enough free stuff. Oh, man, how dare they! The comments range from “What a way to fuck yourself in the ass MP” to “we were expecting to be lavished as most *ahem* ALL host-places do” to “I got two chicken wings. That’s it.” Most of the posts were at roughly the same level of seriousness you’d use for a doctoral dissertation.

Of course, people love to complain with a ridiculous amount of seriousness (especially on the Internet). And there’s nothing wrong with complaining about shitty free food and drinks. But this Yelp user sort of sums up the whole idea of a review site holding events at bars (naturally, it’s in the form of an Internet meme, itself from a cartoon to begin with):

the deal is simple:

Step 1: Mexican Post, you give us lots and lots of your food and alcohol for one night.

Step 2: If the food, drink, and atmosphere are amazing, we will return the favor with lots and lots of equally amazing reviews.

Step 3: Profit and / or world domination for you. Hangover for us.

You blew it, Mexican Post, you blew it.

If you give Yelp free drinks and promotion, you get great reviews on the site. While Mexican Post is certainly stupid for giving bad service to people who were going to go on the Internet afterwards and complain about it, it’s … oh, hell, I’m dangerously close to making a direct point here, and it’s as stupid and obvious as “don’t trust people on the Internet, especially ones who get free shit to write positive reviews.” I’ll stop. Sorry.

Side note: The Yelp post has a Chrissmari sighting!

Semi-related note: If you enjoy awful blogs, hilarious commenters on the Internet and more of the dead seriousness you can only get from people online, be sure to check out this comment thread on BoingBoing. There is so much hilarity involved in it I feel bad having to pick just one awesome comment: “This is a really interesting situation. It reminds me of the Judith Miller portion of the Plame Affair.”

Mexican Post [Yelp]