Realize your post was 6 months ago but I’m just seeing it now.

I don’t think your interpretation of the Restaurant.com program is correct. To qualify my comments, I served as one of their Regional Sales Managers from 2002-2004 and the program may have changed in the last few years. While the customer that purchases a $25 gift certificate for $10 has the “opportunity” to leave a review – they don’t “submit a review for $10″. There’s no obligation on the customer to provide a review in exchange for the certificate value and/or cost.

The true value to the restaurant operator was and still is acquiring a customer for their “food cost” on the $25 certificate they give to Restaurant.com. A cost that is only incurred when and if the customer redeems the gift certificate. The obvious value to the customer is walking into the restaurant with a $25 certificate that only cost them $10. A bona fide customer review was the cherry on top – although I was never convinced the restaurant operators valued the reviews all that much…if at all.

similar thoughts expressed in a past blog post:

http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2007/06/14/ugc-to-be-or-not-to-be-iv/

IYPs are realizing this opportunity, but are a bit late to the game. To your point, it was argued by Jill Hammond during the panel that we’ve passed the point that negative reviews are a detriment to advertiser relationships. That can still be true she says but we’ve reached the tipping point where the advantages (or sometimes competetive necessity) to integrate them outweigh this concern.

The bigger concern, as expressed by Yellowbook.com’s Alfred Chow, is that the wanting numbers of reviews and inconsistency across categories (weighted towards bars and restaurants and lacking in service categories), will lead to an inferior product.

He’s not convinced yet that reviews are a mainstream phenomenon, enough to garner the volume of content that would meet the quality standard of a product that yellowbook would launch. Fair enough. But I believe they will come around soon.

Lots of other dynamics here. Read past coverage of UGC by clicking on the “user generated content” category link on the right column (or follow link below). And thanks for reading and commenting.

http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/category/user-generated-content/

http://www.bizwiki.co.uk allows reviews. TripAdvisor.com has been allowing reviews on its vertical directory (hotels/attractions) for years and it’s worked brilliantly. Yes, some hotel chains pulled out but can businesses really afford to pull out of popular directories just because of a few negative reviews? Do publishers and product/brand owners pull out of Amazon.com sales because people give the books, games or toasters the thumbs down? Or do they need to be on these popular portals/directories because that’s where people go to find out about the hotel/book/game or dare I say it – company?

Traditional yellow page publishers are worried about advertising dollars going elsewhere if a client gets cold feet due to negative reviews. But I say bring it on! Negative reviews show that the site is a credible source of information and web users are savvy enough and used to online reviews enough to know that one negative review does not paint the whole picture.