A million restaurant critics

A decade ago it was the print media’s privilege to publish critiques about a restaurant. With the appearance of the Internet and Web 2.0 surfaces the situation changed because anyone can share their experiences on Facebook, Twitter or their own blogs. In Hungary there are relatively few blogs or sites which specialise in restaurant reviews, and most of the time these are written by critics known to their readers. In the United States more and more ordinary customers write about their experiences about a dinner in social media. Hungarian websites did not really focus on making users possible to add their experiences to restaurants’ profiles. Guests are not motivated to share their opinions, so potential restaurant goers gather information from media rankings. What is the situation west of Hungary? Chowhound, Yelp or Citysearch are popular American websites where customers share their reviews of restaurants. At Yelp.com the emphasis is on the critiques published by users and data about restaurants only come second. Since its launch in 2004 more than 12 million reviews have been published, most of them about restaurants. For example in June 2010 33 million users visited the site, looking for information about reliable service providers or publishing reviews about them. What makes Yelp special? The fact that users share relevant information in a structured, well-organised system. From service providers’ aspect it is a website where they can get to know the preferences of users – a true marketing heaven. Those who write many reviews make it to ‘Yelp Elite’, for which the site organises a monthly meeting. Yelp is often criticised by culinary websites and restaurant owners. Sites that publish anonymous restaurant reviews say that after a negative review on Yelp the author can be reached via e-mail and bribed. Many restaurant owners think Yelp publishes opinions of people who do not have a clue about gastronomy. On the contrary, other owners say it is useful to read these amateur reviews to find out about the weaknesses of a restaurant.Yelp.com now has a French, German, Irish, and British version as well. It would not be surprising if a similar service reached Hungary through Google first. Google Places is already well-known in Hungary too: enterprises can mark their location on Google’s map and share information about themselves. A new related service by Google is Favorite Places, which collects the world’s favourite places, listing the must-visit sites during a 3-day stay. As part of this project, Google also provided 100,000 US enterprises with door stickers with a Google Places QR code, which can be read by using smartphones – users are automatically directed to the place’s Google Places page. In the US Facebook posted ‘Like us on Facebook’ door stickers to many enterprises with a Facebook profile. The growing popularity of social networking sites makes it probable that amateur restaurant critics will not disappear from the web, instead independent reviews by ordinary people will become more popular.