June 19th, 2007
Google Introduces User-Generated Content For Maps Without Community
I made the argument that Google’s weakness is community and social dynamics, which have become as fundamental to the Web as hyperlinks and which represent an opportunity for Yahoo or anyone else to change the game on Google. A perfect example is Google’s new “user-generated content” feature — adding reviews to Google Maps. The problem with this feature is that it’s entirely mechanical — there’s no sense of community. Compare that to Yelp, for example, which is a local review site with a strong community, and which actually trumps Google by using the maps API.
Here is a search for Vietnamese in Washington, DC on Yelp — notice how the restaurants are all located on Google maps.
But here’s what really distinguishes Yelp — each review is marked with a user profile, which lists how many reviews that user has made, giving you a sense for how active they are. Each review also has social features — bookmark to your Yelp profile and send to a friend
The best part, though, is Yelp’s user profile, which gives a rich social context for the review that you are reading — the profile tells you more about who this person is, their other reviews, their friends on the system with similar tastes, ratings of the reviewer by other users (called “compliments”), local photos, and more.
Let’s compare this now to Google’s user reviews on Maps — here’s the same Vietnamese restaurant in Washington, DC on Google:
Ironically, Google is actually pulling in Yelp’s content, which is great for Yelp, but it highlights how cold and sterile reviews are on Google Maps — all of the user profile and social information has been stripped out and is only available on Yelp — again, great for Yelp.
Most striking is when you got to add a review on Google Maps, you see the form has has absolutely no social or community elements:
Google, of course, has the advantage of scale — the ability to force Maps results into the main Web results through Google Universal Search, which will force people into Google Maps, and force them to discover that they can write reviews. But what’s going to motivate them to do so? User-generated content is all about providing users with context, community and social connections. It’s not just about providing a form to fill out.
Google may seem like the master of the universe, but there is a fundamental aspect of the Web — how it connects people, not just information — that remains a blind spot. And it’s a weakness that can be exploited.
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to assist in controlling spam while also rewarding those members who have proven to be effective. Scott Karp does a very good job of explaining the value of community in regards to local review content. His article for Publishing 2.0 can be viewed here. Google does has some community features in place but they are very minimal. One is able to mark a review as inappropriate etc. but the reviews being posted at not being listed under one reviewer. To clarify, if desired, you could list each of your
[IMG] Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0: Google Introduces User-Generated Content For Maps Without Community
Google Maps (wonder if aussie team shipped any of this feature?) has finally gone into the world of not just syndicating the Yelp’s of this world UGC, but letting their own users create/annotate reviews onto G-Maps. I’m with Scott Karp on this one : “The problem with this feature is that it’s entirely mechanical — there’s no sense of community.”
11:35 PM [IMG] Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0: Google Introduces User-Generated Content For Maps Without Community
via Google Introduces User-Generated Content For Maps Without Community » Publishing 2.0
Actually, Google does in fact have a profile page, just click on the user name!!
Sam
I didn’t see any reviews in ones I tried other than those pulled from other sites. Do you have an example?
“And it’s a weakness that can be exploited.”
By Mark Zuckerberg?
You know I really should get sponsorship from those guys.
[…] Scott Karp says the service Yelp.com kicks Google in the “getting social” aspect of review-map […]
[…] too late and had to go off to a dinner thing, and by the time I got back that bugger Scott Karp had said the exact same thing that I was going to. I swear, if it isn’t him it’s Mike Masnick from Techdirt.com. If […]
Here’s an example:
http://www.google.com/reviews/search?hl=en&author=114688680321113124695&st=maps
[…] blog comments already say that the lack of community features is the core weakness in Google’s offering. […]
Interesting; I wonder if the inherent smaller-ness of sites like Yelp gives them some kind of usability advantage over something huge like Yahoo or Google; although Yahoo has attempted in the past to create some kind of social aspect across all the various facets of their site, there isn’t the same sense of community that a smaller site has. Google the same. There are some counter-examples, such as MySpace, but they might not count as the application itself helps to create a smaller social context within the whole.
There will be community when they add mobile dimension…
Scott, I agree with your assessment of Google. In fact I wrote about Google as Web 1.9 a year ago (http://ekive.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-as-web-19.html). Google may be a master of the technological but they have a long way to go in understanding the elements necessary to build a vibrant and compelling community.