"Thumbs up" in smoke
The Atlantic’s excellent article on ratings this month raised an issue we’ve been thinking about at the agency: What will it be like when we all have ratings? Nearly every business I encounter in Los Angeles has been rated by somebody on Yelp.com. Most get a 4-out-of-5-star rating. We usually scan the ratings looking for 1-star reviews. Interested in the single person who really hated Zankou Chicken? Was it the garlic sauce? Maybe they’re a vampire.
Today, ratings exist in closed systems. Yelp, Epinions, Google, Yahoo, iTunes, Amazon, etc. The Atlantic’s article highlights two specialty rating sites: Glassdoor.com, for rating your workplace; and RateMyProfessors.com. There are the sentiment raters like Metacritic.com or Socialmention.com that aggregate comments from the Web and assign value to the totals. Most systems are based on the deliberate input of users clicking a few stars or writing a full-blown review. With the rise of applications like Visible Vote mobile and Socialmedian.com, we seem to be on the verge of a ratings pandemic. An explosion of real-time yays or nays. Input generated while the emotions are still fresh.
Picture a Frank Luntz-style feel-o-meter application that traces how people are responding to events as they unfold. Nielsen ratings for everything in life. My guess is that you can already predict where the high and low marks are going to appear. Waiting — for anything — bad. Free stuff — good. The movement between the extreme ends of the spectrum — how quickly we go from satisfied to unsatisfied during a given experience — will be most interesting to marketers. “I love this frozen yogurt: 5 stars. What! There’s no actual yogurt in it? 4 stars.” And it won’t just be experiences. Are you a Good Samaritan or a bad neighbor. Prepare to be rated.
I once unknowingly cut off my friends on the freeway. Top down, 90 miles an hour, music blaring. I slammed past their Previa — mom, dad, baby, seat, and all. Fortunately, I found out the old-fashioned way: they told my wife. In a couple of years, I suspect, I would just receive an unfavorable review — 1 star — for all the world to see.
Follow-up: July 3
Excellent article today in the NYT about ratings management.
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