Over the weekend I walked into a restaurant and noticed something really interesting on their wall. Where many individually owned eateries usually hang framed reviews or features from local newspapers, this restaurant had a framed review from Yelp. Specifically, it had the Yelp logo and one of the online reviews, which raved about the restaurant. This immediately made me wonder – what’s more influential these days, a good review on Yelp, or a review in the paper?
I had just returned from my 10-day honeymoon in Hawaii, where my wife and I used three factors to determine where to have our meals:
Two guidebooks from Frommer’s (which were sent to me complementary thanks to a Twitter contest)
Suggestions from locals
Yelp
While Frommer’s was usually reliable, we ended up primarily using Yelp to make these decisions. This is because it provided us with a good idea of how many people went to the restaurant (based on how many reviews it had), how people liked the place (the number of stars) and specific suggestions (in the reviews and quick tips). It also had the website and map right there – basically everything we needed in one place. We read through reviews of each place, which offered great recommendations, and we found most of them to be spot-on.
For us, Yelp reviews were much more influential then a newspaper review. It contained feedback from many different people rather then one reporter, and allowed us to get a a wide range of unbiased feelings about the restaurant. I’m not saying a reporter would lie – but it’s a newspaper article is only based on one person’s perspective (as was Frommer’s) and didn’t always align with our experiences. More and more, as Yelp provided us with more accurate information that Frommer’s), we only used one factor in determining where to dine: Yelp.
So is Yelp more influential then a newspaper review? For me, the answer is yes. If I were to read a great newspaper review of a restaurant, I would still check it out on Yelp before going. Also – with restaurants and businesses now aware of Yelp’s power, they are beginning to focus more and more on their online reputations, often contacting unhappy customers (who write negative review) to fix problems (which they often note in their reviews).
The creator of the @BPGlobalPR Twitter account wrote a blog post for Gizmodo, explaining why he decided to start the account. Although he doesn’t provide his true identity (a smart move) the points he makes about BP and online image is spot on. Below is a brief excerpt from the post:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.
Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.
BP seems to only care about maintaining their image so they can keep making money
AOL Travel is launching a really cool project over the next several weeks. They are sending a someone undercover to fly on ten major U.S. airline carriers and report back on their experience. Called the mystery flyer, this person is blogging and tweeting their travel experience.
Since airline travel has been such a frustrating experience for many people over the past several years (especially with added fees for almost everything) this is proving to be quite the cool investigative report for AOL. The blog reports and real-time updates through Twitter enables followers to live through the experience and ask questions as the trip progresses.
Be sure to follow this Twitter handle in the upcoming weeks to get a glimpse of the best and worst airlines.
Social media is obviously a hot topic for the mainstream media. They see opportunity in using it towards turning their career paths and organizations around, and thus their coverage of it is through the roof.
That said, it was puzzling to hear earlier this year that a survey by PR Week / PRNewswire found that only 22% of journalists were leveraging Twitter for crowd-sourcing, connecting with readers and aggregating their stories on the Web. A separate survey, around the same time, by the TEKgroup found that only 38% of journalists would be interested in receiving corporate news via corporate Twitter handles. Yes, those second numbers seemed promising, but where were the mandates to adopt these strategies – FAST?
Well, perhaps the moves by media organizations like the New York Times, to get serious with social media have paid off.
According to a new survey from Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), 70% of journalists said they use social networks to assist in reporting. Compare that to the 41% that said they used social networks to assist in last year’s “Survey of Media in the Wired World.”
The online survey, which will remain open for a few more weeks, has the responses of 317 journalists to date. Far less than the 2,174 polled by PR Week and PR Newswire in April, so the validity of the findings may be in doubt.
For what it’s worth, The Survey of Media in the Wired World also found that:
69% of journalists go to company Web sites to assist in their reporting
While the BBC is having its sattelite signals blocked by Iranian authorities and CNN is being openly critisized – across the Web and throughout the Twitterspere (#CNNFail) - for their lack of coverage on the fallout following the Iraninian election victory claim by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his party; information continues to stream out across the Web from online global “correspondents” (including citizen journalists).
Nico Pitney, National Editor for the Huffington Post, is “live-blogging” the events from Tehran by pulling together content and information from people on the ground and others aggregating it across the Web.
There is no doubt the Social Web has made it easier for these modern-day “correspondents” and “international editors” as they aggregate the news of the disputed elections with hashtags such as #IranElection on Twitter, and bring video and pictures to the masses through YouTube and Flickr.
“That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.”
To be fair to the mainstream media, we can’t blame their lack of coverage or lack of portraying actual events (as they happen in Tehran) on their closure of foreign bureaus. They’ve made an effort to cover this. While people are criticizing CNN.com, their best international correspondent is directly addressing Ahmadinejad on the status of his rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi.
The New York Times is dedicating their The Lede blog to the discussion and has correspondents and even columnists taking a look at the happenings on the ground in Tehran.
This is really a case of the mainstream media being hampered by authorities that want to vastly limit the information coming out of Tehran, especially from the international free press. But they can’t cut off all communications in this information age.
Citizen journalists aren’t waiting for the mainstream media. They’re taking to every communication technology available and filling in ”pieces of the puzzle,” as Iranian authorities scramble to take down telecommunications, Internet and mobile access. Mir Hossein Moussavi , himself, is taking to Twitter to update “his people” on his location and safety.
Iran, although closed off from the world in some respects by its regime, has embraced the Internet-age. Even with talk of the death penalty for those that oppose the regime through blogs on the Web, Iran is home to the 3rd largest group of bloggers in the world. They are driving this crowd-sourced news story through small tweets of information.
So while we should still fear the death of publications like the New York Times, this event offers hope in citizen journalism and processing through some type objective, free press outlet. The Times, itself, has been outspoken against the act of “process journalism,” but this type of process journalism is crucial to the future of democracy.
