Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by lean | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

lean·

Zagat still exists? Isn't it a bunch of old reviews written by a handful of writers?

View on HN

"Zagat Survey ... in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagat#Rating_system

Admittedly I haven't tried as their site runs off a "pay to see the full content of this review" model.

The Michelin Guide is actually a 'bunch of reviews written by a handful of writers', which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Every restaurant I've been to that's even been Michelin rated has been superb.

It is interesting to note that the Michelin Guide itself orignated as a complementary marketing tool -- Michelin makes tires, and wanted people to use their cars more. So they compiled a list of places people might want to go, and added the reviews to make them even more attractive.

You might be confusing Michelin with Zagat.

Zagat has always used a crowd-sourced model, collecting customer reviews and publishing them in book form. They haven't really adapted this as well online (I'm sure this is where Google will give them a huge boost), but their approach was always UGC before people talked about UGC.

Zagat's reviews are based on consumer surveys, not paid reviewers. They were doing user generated content long before anyone called it that. Their full name is actually Zagat Survey, LLC. More info: http://www.zagat.com/about-us/how-we-survey

Reply on news.ycombinator.com