Via the prolific Jon Bonne comes this link to a rather interesting conversation starter on restaurant reviews in 140 characters or less. I was silently hoping someone would call them “micro reviews” so I could come back and yell at them, but I guess people are smarter than I hoped. Good example of smart? The linked article.
Rebekah Denn makes it clear what she thinks (and she is right, in my opinion) – the twitter conversations are in no way “reviews”, but more or less an electronic version of the conversations we have been having before – chatter between us and our 3,478 closest friends about dining somewhere. But then, why do Yelp reviews, many of which offer about as much or less meat than a 140 character conversation, qualify as “reviews”.
Or do they?
As a chef, I am fairly acquainted with the power of conversations. Sure, a Bauer or Bruni review gets us the big crowds for a few days, but sustainable traffic comes from different sources, most notably the same word of mouth twitter has brought into the Intertubewebs. A week of 300 cover nights, as exciting and financially rewarding as it might be, can quickly lose all its attraction if the following weeks fail to put butts into my chairs. Likewise, an imperfect Bauer or Bruni review, as frustrating as it is, can be quickly offset by a good word of mouth campaign.
In that regard, I am more concerned about twitter as one of the many word of mouth mediums than my Michelin rating. If, before iPhones are shaken and Android map searches are performed, someone in that undecided group of six remembers my name, I win. If it takes an iPhone shake, I might lose – not necessarily due to a bad review but also thanks to imperfect search algorithms and incomplete databases.
Make no mistake, a “went to House on Hill, oysters were sandy” conversation piece can, and will, have a much deeper impact than Michael Bauer’s measured juxtaposition of damning and redeeming qualities. Which, let’s face it, makes it even more important for restaurateurs and chefs to become Twitter savvy and immerse themselves into the conversation, rather than remaining outside, dispensing unidirectional wisdoms.
What’s your take? Do conversational fragments (not necessarily on twitter) inform your dining decisions more, equal, or less than Bauer or Bruni? What makes for a good recommendation?
The opinion of my friends means quite a lot to me when looking at what restaurant to visit. I’ll sometimes look at Yelp for ideas about what’s in the neighborhood if I’m hankering to try something new, but I don’t put much stock in the reviews on Yelp. The folks that tend to post reviews aren’t representative (by and large) of what I’m expecting out of a restaurant: Good to Excellent service by FoH, and Good to Great food prepared by BoH (in that order).
Who it comes from means more than anything else. If my friend Katie, who does the food reviews for We Love DC, tweets about a great place she tried, or tweets about the lousy service somewhere else? That means more than anything else. It’s not the only source I trust, but if someone I know & trust says they’re off their game, I’ll steer clear a bit.
From my point of view, comments on twitter about a restaurant should not be considered reviews, but they do have an impact on people’s perceptions on a restaurant.
Yes, there are thousands of people on twitter. Many food-related tweeps congregate around one another, so when someone says something less than positive about a restaurant, the comment will reverberate potentially to much larger audience.
However, while twitter is considered micro-blogging, it is not a blog like chezgeek. Twitter conversations are fleeting, dynamic, and disappear after 2 weeks (or so) into the void. I hypothesize that the servers at Amazon simply can’t persist tweets for any longer period of time and stay responsive (or economical, whichever comes first). As such, twitter is a great medium to discuss and develop ideas about a restaurant, but it is a particularly bad place for reviews. Discussions are disjointed and searching twitter conversations for restaurants is difficult unless tweeps carefully employ hashtags.
True bloggers on the other hand, especially food bloggers, write in-depth pieces on restaurants and food, usually including pictures. These blogs tend to be much more permanent and are indexed by Google and Bing. Some of us food bloggers even follow a code of ethics (http://foodethics.wordpress.com) that include Food Critic Guidelines (http://www.afjonline.com/afj.aspx?pgID=887) from the Association of Food Journalists.
When it comes to negative reviews, I want to read reasons why something went wrong or something is bad. Having a picture and attaching some rational thought helps. While I do peruse Yelp and the like, I take very little at face value.