Urbanspoon is a steamy pile
Do you blog? If yes, why do you blog? Ok, let’s not be philosophical…what is your PRIMARY REASON for blogging? My highly unscientific poll found:
- I blog because it helps to enhance my business visibility/connect to potential consumers (17 people – pretty normal folks – like feeding their families/think their toaster has more brains than Lindsey Lohan.)
- I blog because it’s a nice creativity/nerdy/techie outlet (6 people – Makes sense; we all need to vent)
- I blog because that is how I make my living (2 people – Aren’t we special?)
- I blog because it feeds my soul and I like sharing what I’ve learned (1
knobperson – Altruistic, solar-powered, granola-crunching machine) - I blog cause it gives me something to do when I’m high (1 person – well, more like 1 lovable dipshit really)
Whether it’s micro-blogging on Twitter, travel blogging on Travelblog, or restaurant blogging on Yelp, many people blog to support their core business or connect to potential customers. Stands to reason that when blogging, a person would want to link to their other projects/businesses/endeavors especially if they are in any way related to the blog content the reader is clearly interested in (they are there reading your blog aren’t they?).
Until recently, I was a faithful contributor to the social network/restaurant blog Urbanspoon. I ‘opened’ a couple dozen restaurants, wrote nearly 100 restaurant reviews, uploaded dozens of pictures, and had lots of ‘kudos’ from other Urbanspoon reviewers. According to Google Analytics, I had a little bit of traffic coming in from my Urbanspoon links…modest, but, good. Then I received EMAIL #1 below and the dialog began:
This is one reason why Urbanspoon sucks
Less than ten minutes later, my account and all associated postings were deleting….poof! Just like that. No, “well, we understand, how about this ________” or “Ok, well, we do appreciate our contributors who provide (for free) the content which drives our site so what do you think about this ____________”.
Nope, customer representative Greg, just pulled the plug, indicating to me that Urbanspoon values strong-arming its voluntary contributors over helping them in a reciprocal (you scratch me, I’ll scratch you) manner.
No big deal, all of my reviews are fine and are now posted in Yelp. (Only morons like this, this and this don’t back up their own content, regardless of where it is created.)
I thought to myself, “this is very strange “F.U.” type behavior coming from a snappy little tech company”. Having worked at small tech companies before, this sort of Orwellian approach was quite the opposite from my experience. I decided to enter the rabbit hole.
- Far from its startup roots, Urbanspoon is now a cog in a massive, multinational Internet/Media company (2010 Revenues = $1.64 Billion) called IAC/InterActiveCorp
- IAC is headed by Barry Diller – winner of Nicholas D. Kristof’s 2006 “Michael Eisner Award” for corporate rapacity and laziness (and former CEO of Fox – the undisputed KING of speech/message control)
- Barry Diller was the highest-paid executive for fiscal year 2005 – total compensation package of $295 Million
- Urbanspoon’s hatred is starting to grow on Amplicate, check out these interesting comments about Urbanspoon’s practices
Bottom line, you’d better serve your PRIMARY REASONS for blogging by heading over to Yelp…a small (150+ employees) company with a head for Web 2.0 concepts, a focus on its volunteer contributors which generates substantially more traffic, and isn’t dumping its contributors based on arcane policy enforcement. Quite the opposite really, as Yelp puts a little banner above each of your reviews which allows you to post a standard little message across ALL your reviews (ie: a little link back to your content, they actually give a shit about your interests and related information!). Wow, this all seems so intelligent. Plus, they have actual star ratings instead of some lame ‘thumbs-up’, ‘thumbs-down’ rating criteria (wtf, do we live is some retard, binary world where a restaurant is either THUMBS UP – “unbelievably, ridiculously wonderful” or THUMBS DOWN – “I’d rather eat my own feces”. Lame.
So, I conclude this post with a little present to Greg, Barry Diller and all the crotch-sniffers over at Urbanspoon:
A little present for Greg and all the folks over at Urbanspoon/IAC
DO YOU THINK URBANSPOON SUCKS AS MUCH AS I DO? THEN AMPLICATE THIS MOTHERF*CKER AND VOICE YOUR OPINION! http://amplicate.com/hate/urbanspoon/act-8137247-move-your-urbanspoon-reviews-to-yelp-and-cancel-ur/
And yeah, part of my reason for blogging is to push paper (or bits and bytes). Hating on THE MAN is just icing:
my debut novel now available at bookstores everywhere
Amazon is a great place to purchase it. So is Barnes and Noble, ITunes and Google. But, the best place to buy it is SMASHWORDS!! Want a paperback instead of an ebook?
Posted by danielshortell.com 