What motivates people to give reviews?

Well, now that is an interesting question, and the fact is there is not a universal answer for everyone, we all have our different reasons. In answering that question the best we can do is offer several different opinions.

I guess the main thing is that people are unlikely to review a business if they get no recognition for the time they put into it. For example, if

Local search is the second most popular activity on the web

According to a Piper Jaffray 2007 research paper 30% of all web queries contain some sort of location element. They also predict that over the next ten years local search ad revenue will grow five-fold.

The long tail of business classified advertising

I had lunch with one particular analyst last week and he explained that 90% of all businesses LISTED in yellow pages services are businesses with 5 employees or less. Imagine that, there are MILLIONS of SMALL businesses out there.

And I happen to know that on average less than 15% of all businesses

I see comments like this everywhere…

Now, granted I am sensitive to this sort of story, but seriously I see comments like this everywhere:

“…the Yellow Pages priced themselves out of sight. I have one business client who will gut their YP ads this year because now that everyone’s online, the Yellow Pages are next to worthless. DEX having decided to

Brownbook helps small business market themselves online

Recently I’ve found myself answering the question “why should a small business get listed in The Brownbook?”. Well, there are several answers but they mostly boil down to the goal of getting more business. Let me elaborate a little:

User generated reviews have significant impact on buying behaviour

I just came across this ComScore press release which

“examined the impact of consumer-generated reviews on the price consumers were willing to pay for a service delivered offline. The study, based on a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. Internet users in October 2007, revealed that consumers were willing to pay at least 20 percent more for services receiving an “Excellent,” or 5-star, rating than

Human nature, mischief, and peer-production

I just discovered this great quote from Kevin Kelly (Wired author), here it is (plus the link to the whole thing):

“Much of what I believed about human nature, and the nature of knowledge, has been upended by the Wikipedia. I knew that the human propensity for mischief among

The advantages of The Brownbook over traditional internet yellow pages (IYP).

Two significant trends are changing the world as we knew it;

1. There is a tidal wave of honesty and openness riding through online society, previously bad experiences were shared at the pub and over coffee. Today people can share their experiences with thousands of others using blogs, forums…

2. The power of peer production in communities, social networks, wikis and crowdsourcing projects is

Should I be scared of ‘bad’ reviews?

I recently had an email from a friend you had added their business to The Brownbook, and they were a little concerned about the fact that a business could get a bad review (not their business incidentally, which I happen to know has many happy clients, but in general).

I figured its a logical fear for a business owner that first discovers that

How can The Brownbook work for my club… my website?

Someone asked me, how can they make The Brownbook work for their club? Eg. Shops in the area that give our members a discount, or businesses that are owned by our members, or shops that supply certain specialist goods that are used by our members…