Are Those Reviews Coming From a Trusted Source?
Posted by Sebastien on the 2008/01/22 at 04:37
in IgoUgo, Travel, TripAdvisor, User Reviews, Zagat -
Today’s New York Times has an article on hotel and restaurant reviews. They mostly talk about TripAdvisor and IgoUgo (which I had never heard of until today) and compare them to Zagat. Most of the information in there has been thoroughly discussed before (user reviews vs. editor reviews, moderated vs. un-moderated comments) but one quote from Tim Zagat (Zagat’s co-founder) really stood out for me. Talking about consumer reviews, he said:
“Some Internet companies are running into the problem that anybody can throw up things on the wall, and after a while there are just too many people doing it.”
What it means: Tim Zagat is onto something. He doesn’t express it that way but it’s all about reviews from “trusted sources”. A trusted source could be, for example, a pro reviewer/critic (aggregated in sites like Metacritic.com), a friend or someone from an affinity group (or trusted community). Some of the travel and review sites out there suffer from a lack of “trusted sources” and it’s the reas