The Venture Edge

I just read an article in the New York Times reporting that the popular Yelp.com website has made a major change to its policies. In case you're not familiar with Yelp, it's a website where anyone can write reviews of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, dry cleaners, CPAs, fish markets, and most any other kind of business you can imagine. You can even write reviews of local places of interest, such as museums, parks, and beaches. I've been a BIG fan of Yelp for a couple of years now, and I rely heavily on the Yelp app on my iPhone when I'm looking for a great place to eat in an unfamiliar town. What's changing with Yelp's policies is that starting last week, the company now allows businesses to respond to negative comments left about them by reviewers. And believe me, reviewers can sometimes leave comments that are both brutal -- and untrue.