Photo du Jour 516
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Tiger Woods In "Serious" Condition After Car Crash
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Builder of Oakland's Fox Theater Once Imprisoned For 'White Slavery'
We had already been pretty fascinated with the growing trend of online user reviews lately. Then last week, the Chronicle came out with an article on "amateur" food blogs and restaurant reviews, about which SFist Jeremy posted an awesome rant, prompting some great dialog in the comments.
We ourselves haven't yet jumped into writing our own user reviews, but we love to read other people's. In recent times, we have checked out the forums at Steve's Digicams when we were buying a digital camera(s) (we left the first one at Dolores Park and later bought the upgraded version, which quickly became old news a few months later), the Netflix member reviews for new titles to add to our queue, and Trip Advisor when we were recently searching for a good hotel for our family's upcoming visit to the city. (We ended up going with Hotel Fusion for the majority of our family, and Astoria Hotel for the die-hard smokers who just couldn't bare staying in a non-smoking room.)
For everything else, we Yelp. Yelp.com has been at the forefront of our fascination with like-minded people who happen to keep good records of where they've been, whether they liked it, and every detail they can think of in between. (Read Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman's SFist interview from last year.) Yelp reviews are very entertaining but sometimes pretty over-the-top. We're good at deciphering the legitimate ones from those with hidden agendas, but we do find ourselves often shunning businesses that get less than 3.5 stars. This is a bit unsettling since we've found that a few decent places that we had frequented before reading Yelp didn't always get the best ratings. So, we're left wondering, how much does Yelp.com effect—and reflect—our daily, consumeristic lives?
After the cut: Just for fun, we examine the businesses we've frequented that have garnered the most interesting reviews. All in all, Yelp rarely does us wrong.
Most Entertaining
Cafe Gratitude (Mission location) 3.5 stars
2400 Harrison St @ 20th St
Cafe Gratitude's Yelp reviews are very evenly, and amusingly, mixed, and we found our first visit last month to be on par with many Yelpers' experiences. We felt our server was curiously inattentive, and the required, positive affirmations that came with her scarce presence seemed insincere for that reason. We thought the food was pretty good, but many of us observed that the entrees barely resembled their names and were far from filling, yet our bill made it look like we had gorged ourselves. (Also, like many, many reviewers said, it gave us nasty gas afterwards. Normally, we are the opposite of gassy.) We do wish we had checked out the awe-inspiring, high-powered hand dryer in the bathroom, like a couple of Yelpers mentioned—coincidentally, Yelp CEO Jeremy S. was one of them!
Most Valuable
Yogic Motion 4.5 stars
1120 Pacific Ave @ Taylor
Last fall, we were desperate to find a good yoga studio that wasn't going to break our wallets, which we thought was a tall order in this town. Then the lovely Yelpers steered us in the direction of Yogic Motion in Russian Hill. We agreed with reviewers that Yogic Motion features poses that are consistently challenging and strength-building, in addition to improving our flexibility. Owner Brian Monnier's instructions and attentiveness make it easy for beginners to keep up without feeling too ashamed of their inflexibility (we speak from experience). We've been religiously attending classes four days a week for the past five months. (Has it been that long, already?!)
Most Puzzling
This category calls for a comparison of two of our favorite standby restaurants that we had frequented before reading their reviews on Yelp. One got four stars, while the other only got three!
U-Lee 4 stars
1468 Hyde St @ Jackson
U-Lee is a bit on the greasy side, but we feel it's better quality than many Chinese restaurants. And the pot stickers are to die for! Despite many reviews that said U-Lee was nothing special and downright unappetizing, the restaurant still has an impressive average of four stars.
Kitaro 3 stars
5723 Geary @ 21st Ave
We feel you can't beat the very affordable and relatively fresh sushi at Kitaro, and despite feeling like its located in BFE, we used to trek all the way out there at least every other week. (We've since moved on to Sushi Rika, which is a pretty good deal, or I Luv Teriyaki & Sushi, which we discovered through Yelp as well.) Kitaro's reviews seem to be as mixed as U-Lee's, but they only received three stars.
This is surprising because we personally would give Kitaro 4 stars and U-Lee 3 or 3.5. This leads us to believe that the amount of reviews a restaurant has might yield a more balanced average rating. Kitaro has 126 reviews, whereas U-Lee only has 42. Plus, people might just be pickier about sushi in general.
Honorable Mentions
These are all places we found through Yelp that we will definitely frequent again.
Anvil Hair Design 4.5 stars
773 14th St (near Market & Church)
$35 for a medium-length haircut, and we love how Tammye does our hair (as she chats with us about all the bands we've both seen lately).
Minna Nails 4.5 stars
1185 Church St @ 24th St
$20 for a spa-style mani-pedi, and my hands and feet look great. And they don't talk to each other about you in their native language (or at least they keep it to a very discreet minimum).
David's Tailor Shop 4.5 stars
870 Market St, Suite 305 @ Powell
Fast, convenient, friendly, affordable and good quality!
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Yelp.com has replaced the old phone book/Yellow Pages. While you can read a review by a newspaper columnist, that is a sample size of just one. Not that I was enthralled by my past statistics courses in college, but it makes sense that if I can get a sampling of 30 folks, I will have a better estimate of a service/business than I can get from just one.
I just hope they can make the $$$$ to grow and prosper.
I have been an avid yelper since 2005, and continue to post reviews today. I am often surprised and delighted by how often people utilize the site. What started out as a past-time for me (love writing, am lame professional grinder), has turned into a great hobbie with benefits. Although sometimes I find the site "antics" and talkboards a bit juvenile, overall I think that Yelp rules. Thanks for the shout out!
I love Yelp. It's led me to all kinds of off-the-beaten-track places I'd have never found on my own (or would even know to look for).
I don't like yelp for one reason - the first place I ever looked up, out of curiosity, was a coffee shop around the corner from me on Masonic that I was pretty disappointed with after my first visit. Yet almost all the Yelp reviews gave the place glowing praise. So I went back, several times, to see if I was just in a bad mood that first day - but the coffee was still crappy, and the service was still rude and slow, and the place still had all the ambiance of a college basement rec room. So what gives? Either I'm out of the loop on coffee shops or 90% of the Yelp reviews of this place are total crap. Given the amount of coffee I drink and the number of espresso machines I've worked behind, I think it's the latter.
My favorite thing about Yelp is the slick Google maps integration, particularly when searching. When you zoom in or drag the map around, it automatically regenerates your search for the area displayed. And then the map "follows" you as you scroll down the page to look at the results. Top notch.
Yelp is fascinating in that it's successful even though it as a community is less than focused on its primary function - being a directory with reviews. Like myspace, it's more important that a review is funny, popular and make you look cool, rather than actually reviewing the place. Ok, that place got omgwtf23 laid, and weegirl was sooo drunk when she went there. Awesome. Now, how's their coffee?
Also, it's not easy enough to discover new places based on location.
Those are my main gripes with yelp. That said, it's not like there's any real competition for finding new places. :)
I had high hopes for ylep, but almost never go there now, except to find out the hours a place is open, or their phone number. I find the reviews almost worthless now.
You can find just about any opinion about any place. I mean, there are people who diss Blue Bottle on there. Crazy stuff.
Yelp like almost all 2.0 sites is a subliminal dating site. The "friending" of other reviewers whose snark or cutesy style you like, the need for people to try and infuse so much "personality" into their avatar... the nudity....All for reviews that seldom stray beyond 'loved it' or 'hated it'. A word of mouth review only works if I know whose mouth it's coming from. And I don't want to have to wade through all of your semi-literate opinions to realize that I don't care about yours.
Maybe Yelp needs to develop some sort of credibility ranking of the members' reviews so that you can hopefully gleen the more useful reviews ... though funny stories sometimes help too.
Strike that ... I meant credibility ranking of the members themselves. Just verifying an identity is more credible than a totally unknown.
Yes, the "hip and quirky," completely subjective, TMI sorts of reviews are definitely the most annoying aspect of Yelp. I've read more than a few that have made me shudder in embarrassment.
But luckily they're also very easy to weed through and roll one's eyes at.
If a business is popular enough to have more than a few reviews, I feel like I can always find a common thread or two--good and bad, in the case of Cafe Gratitude...
Yelp is an online community and online communities scale very, very poorly. The more popular Yelp becomes, the less useful it ends up. Go ahead, read some user-submitted Amazon.com book reviews. These used to be great, circa 1997. Today, not so much.
Whether or not Yelp has crossed the helpful/not helpful threshold is in the eye of the beholder. Frankly, I stick with the personal recommendations of friends with trustworthy palates.