Melbourne’s word on the street
Published by 
ifarmer on September 3, 2007 05:06 pm
under Consumer Generated
In an attempt to attract young people, Leader Newspapers (owned by Newscorp) has created a local search site called Nook.
The site is intended to be a lot more than just local search, allowing users to join the conversation and write about local venues such as restaurants, review local tradesmen, as well as discuss local issues.
There are no ads on the site yet, but there’s little doubt that the site will start to run ads once the content and audience numbers grow.
Where I live is a similar site servicing Sth East Queensland.
Perspective: One of the challenges from the existing local search models such as Sensis’s Yellowpages and New’s Truelocal, is that they don’t provide facilities for consumers to review businesses. This is mainly because their listings are subscription based, and they haven’t found a way to juggle charging businesses a $1000 listing fee, while allowing consumers to publish a bad review next to their listing.
However, I think that consumer review sites have a definite place and if executed correctly, even the reviews get reviewed and rated, thereby providing a much richer source of information for readers. Amazon and Cnet are perhaps the best examples of this where professional reviews are mixed with consumer reviews to provide a rich source of product commentaries. Ning’s Restaurent Reviews with maps is another example that is purely consumer review driven. If Nook strikes a chord in Melbourne, I have no doubt that News will expand the service to other cities. I also think there is a place for professional consumer review organisations like Choice to take the lead in this space.
| 3.1 |
Hi Ian,
You’re spot on - regarding the conflict that these traditional websites face; charging businesses for a premium/sponsored list and then allowing for a negative review to be posted.
US-based Yelp, through a bit of magic of their own, have managed to get businesses to purchase a ‘Sponsored Result’ and let people post negative reviews about that business (if they so wish)
See the business listing for the restaurant Taqueria Zorro in this result, for an example
http://www.yelp.com/search?find_loc=San+Francisco%2C+CA&cflt=restaurants
One of the reasons that I think Yelp were successful in doing this is that the site was founded by a couple of guys who weren’t from the traditional business directory/media space. From day one they envisage a consumer-centric business directory and it succeeded (it also helped that US defamation laws aren’t as stringent as they are here in Australia)
How would this work with small businesses in Australia?
Well, in my opinion, its going to take a long to change the current sentiment of ” what if my business gets a negative review ” to ” I don’t mind getting a genuine negative review, as long as I can learn from my mistakes “.
Beneath the surface, there is a bit of action happening in the reviewing space, as you indicated with Nook and WhereIlive. I wrote a fairly detailed summary of some of the other sites in the reviewing space in Australia here:
http://raveaboutit.blogspot.com/2007/08/local-business-search-review-scene-in.html
Cheers for the interesting post (and blog in general
),
Mark