Yelp steps into the sunshine

Yelp just announced two substantial moves to eliminate the controversy brewing around alleged linkage between retailer advertising support and review quality.

The company is making it possible to see how their review filter works and will even show you the reviews that have been filtered. They are also eliminating the "Favorite Review" feature. Why you see what you see on Yelp just got a lot more transparent.

In retrospect, these changes are actually product improvements. Better information and less fog obscuring motives. For a company built on the idea of using consumer feedback as a weapon to reward and punish marketers, it's ironic they took this long to act on the input they were receiving themselves.

Our natural reaction as passionate, competitive marketers is often to try and argue with the public when we feel they misunderstand our company or actions. That knee-jerk reaction immediately puts us in an adversarial role with consumers. It's hard to pull out of the ping-pong match once things escalate.

At some point perhaps Yelp realized the angry hoards might have a point - maybe they could actually improve their product by making it more transparent. On the other hand, Yelp may view these recent steps as necessary concessions - conceding they could never argue the social media beast into submission. Either way, they made the right decision. Chalk one up for the meritocracy.