Yelp as an anti-brand hero

I made a quick trip to Charlevoix last week. Without much planning, we needed to stop to eat a quick bite on the road. Although, generally, I prefer to eat at good independent restaurants, the lack of time and planning made me want to consider a chain restaurant.

A large chain restaurant is a brand, and the attraction of brands is that you know what to expect. Even is you arrive in a new place, you can walk in to a restaurant that you never been, and yet the experience will be pretty much what you expected it to be. No great surprises, but no awful experiences either. This is what makes people go easily to Starbucks in a new place rather than sampling an unknown little cafe, even if the upside of a better experience may well be there.

If I have been in San Francisco instead of in Chalevoix, I would have used Yelp to quickly find a non-chain place. Yelp has reached a critical mass in San Francisco and as such, you can pretty much find the place you want based on the reviews (well, you need to actually read a bit the reviews, not just the ratings if you want a fair idea of the place).

All that really made me think about how Yelp may be in fact an anti-brand hero. A shining light for all those small business that try hard, agains odds to offer a different and unique product. A way for potential customers to discover those great places and to steer way from large brands without risking an awful experience.

What do you think?

Data, information and news integrity in the age of clouds

The Internet as a network is often represented as a cloud. In some ways it may be an indication of how we are behaving collectively when reading or sharing information.

Not so long ago (10 years), I was sitting in Computer Sciences classes at McGill University where I was learning about good database practice to ensure data integrity, normalization and good quality results. Large database system that banks are using have been designed with this high quality in mind. After all, who wants to have a some money, maybe more maybe less, no real knowledge of bills or prices.

Yet, somehow, this is more or less what we get with news and information on the web today. Shall we trust what we read or share? Similarly, computer systems that are build to sustain huge number of user are now build more for the sake of giving quick response time to the user (loading your web page quicker) than for making sure that the data integrity is sage. This is partly the trend of what is called "noSQL".

After all, most outlets on the web today are desperate to show you more ads to try to make money than to give you accurate data, information and news.

Give it to me now, give it to me raw, share it quick, quicker than my friends so I get more exposures and prestige. Quantity, speed. I don't care about quality and integrity.

Is the cloud clouding our judgement?