Yelp Still Freaking Users Out
Here's yet another story on how Yelp are bullies, via Eater. Robert, a coffee blogger in Vancouver had signed up for a Yelp account a few weeks ago, but didn't do anything with it until he heard from Crystal H, who told him she was looking for good coffee places to check out. Crystal convinced Robert to start putting his cafe reviews on Yelp, telling him she had received a lot of traffic to her own website through Yelp ("much more than Twitter").
Robert posted sixteen reviews in a couple of days and was getting a lot of good feedback from other users. He also included a link at the bottom of each review to his own site, which Crystal told him was a no-no (but Yelp still allows users to submit them). She then instructed Robert to start reviewing other venues besides cafes, and to please put some "Yelp Bling" on his site to drive traffic to Yelp. A bit pushy, wouldn't you say?
Of course, it turns out Crystal is a Yelp employee, the new community manager for Yelp Vancouver, to be exact, but her Yelp page does not make that clear. She responded on Robert's site that her page does clearly state that she works for Yelp, but that's only if you hover over the teeny-tiny "Ambassador" badge next to the "Elite" button on her profile and then read the last line that pops up (see photo).
Within 48 hours of being asked to submit his two years' worth of cafe reviews, Robert was banned from the site without warning for violating Yelp’s Terms of Service, specifically for using his account for "commercial or promotional purposes." In Crystal's response to Robert's post about the incident, she said that since Robert didn't use his real name or include a photo, and he included links at the bottom of every review, he appeared "spammy." Regarding Robert's using a pseudonym and no photo -- Yelp's TOS states, “though you may opt instead to provide information that does not make you personally identifiable.”
We like how commenter Gregg summed up Yelp on Robert's post: Yelp seems to be "the worst case large scale model of how to get users to create your content while treating them like they are mooching scum, when in reality it is you mooching off of them."