This article on AdWeek is short but sweet... it has some interested stats about how people are influenced by reviews online. Not surprisingly, people are most influenced by reviews by friends and family - 71%, as opposed to only 33% being influenced by reviews on blogs or message boards.
It also talks about how people use social media "as an outlet to rant or rave about a company, brand or product" - but that's not surprising. People interact with thousands of brands a day, so it's inevitable that at some point a Twitter user is going to post a "review" of something - even if it's as casual as "Had a great lunch at Joe's Diner with Cindy."
I think it really comes down to trust. We trust our friends, even though sometimes they're less reliable than others. People trust Wikipedia, for better or worse.
It'd be interesting to see a site like Yelp add a feature where the opinions of your friends (or people you say you trust) are weighted more heavily than the opinions of strangers.
Bay Area Web Design
Posted by: New Haven OBGYN | October 11, 2010 at 04:45 PM