#BTV #VT – Posted by David on his FPF today…

I asked on the Shelburne Front Porch Forum if anyone had experience with ophthalmologists and cataract surgery in the Burlington area and quickly got eight responses, all of them extremely helpful. What a good resource…

The Sunday Times in the UK writes that Yell employees wrote 6,700 reviews for the site (TrustedPlaces) in a month for an internal contest. According to secondary reports:

Staff at the firm’s Reading HQ were encouraged to write reviews for the company’s website Trusted Places – a site boasting user-generated recommendations of places to visit – by the offer of prizes such as an iPad and Amazon vouchers, according to the Sunday Times.

The article and information are presented as something of an expose or scandal. However I don’t necessarily agree. If the reviews are real and authentic they’re not illegitimate in my mind. But it’s a close call…

Well… I’m not sure how 6,700 reviews written by paid staff for some kind of internal contest could be considered “real and authentic.”  More importantly, this fuels a not uncommon suspicion that many online reviews are B.S.  It’s just too easy to stack the deck with reviews from people who have a stake in the business being reviewed or in the host site itself.

We often hear from people who place a high value on reviews read on Front Porch Forum.  They use terms like “real” and “authentic” because that’s what they are… postings from clearly identified nearby neighbors typically offered in response to a request from a neighbor… “can anyone recommend a good plumber?”

Also, each recommendation is seen by everyone in the neighborhood, not just those few who happen to be searching for a plumber.  This leads to  conversation among neighbors… sometimes on FPF, often via email, and even more commonly face-to-face.

So… a huge database of potentially bogus reviews from strangers… vs. a few reviews from clearly identified nearby neighbors that lead to conversations among neighbors on the sidewalk.  Two different propositions.

This is thanks, in part, to e-Vermont.  Applications from other Vermont towns are welcome by Nov. 17, 2010.

But the people of Middlesex say it best.  Here’s a video clip and a recent newspaper article… both worth a quick perusal.

Dear Neighbors – Thank you so much for all the wonderful recommendations that we received for painters. There is nothing like having a recommendation from a neighbor. We thank you and our house thanks you!

That’s lovely.  And just now I see that Jeanne followed up with one of her own…

About those house painter recommendations…

Front Porch Forum works well as a community/neighborhood information system.  If you are responding to someone’s request for a recommendation, please post the recommendation on Front Porch Forum rather than emailing the recommendation directly to the private email address of the initial query.  If the recommendation is openly posted we all can benefit from the advice and it will be in the archives for all to search.

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

At this point none of experts we’ve consulted can seem to explain what could be happening, so I’m turning to the awesome collective wisdom of FPF.

You know… he’s right.  More than 90% of the households in his particular neighborhood subscribe to FPF and got his message.  There’s more wisdom in this group than in any one store clerk or telephone customer service person he may have consulted.  And more than a few of these neighbors share the same problem and may have already solved this problem.

I see one response already in the queue for the next issue of his neighborhood forum… and I’m sure he’ll hear from several people directly.

UPDATE:  Greg and family are relatively new to the state.  So, in addition to appreciating solutions for the window problem, the conversation with all of these clearly identified nearby neighbors is valuable in of itself.

Front Porch Forum’s mission is to help neighbors connect and build community… and we do that by facilitating conversation among clearly identified nearby neighbors about all sorts of topics.

I don’t know Angie’s List’s mission, but here’s a quote from The Local Onliner today…

Angie Hicks, the co-founder and namesake of Angie’s List, said she thinks of her company as a direct marketing machine. Speaking at ClickZ’s Online Marketing Summit in San Diego this morning, Hicks noted that “we’re direct marketers at heart. If it doesn’t perform, it’s out.”

Michigan family quickly learns the Vermont way
By Myra Mathis-Flynn
Burlington Free Press
December 22, 2008

Much can happen in the process of a move, but when Patrick and Juliet Halladay decided to pack up their three kids and move from Michigan to Burlington, they did not anticipate someone almost losing a finger.

When Juliet Halladay was hired as a professor in the University of Vermont’s Elementary Education program, the family packed its belongings for the trip East. During the moving process, the Halladay’s couch dropped onto Juliet’s finger. The appendage was spared only because of her engagement ring, which took the brunt of the impact. As a result, the ring was a wreck.

Patrick Halladay ventured onto the Church Street Marketplace to find a local store to fix his wife’s ring. Enter Lippa’s Jewelers.

“This is a Christmas of some fiscal austerity,” Patrick Halladay said. “I decided to spend a bit of money to get the ring reshaped and thought that I would like to use someone local. I stopped at Lippa’s because it looked local. They said bring it in, it will be $20.”

When Jeff Berger, owner of Lippa’s came back, he told Halladay he owed nothing for the repair, and to have a happy holiday. Halladay immediately posted a story on the gesture on his neighborhood, Front Porch Forum so others could hear of the good deed.

“What really surprised me is that I have never been to the store; I’m not a regular; he had no idea who I was,” Halladay said. “It made me feel positively inclined to not have a good deed be unrewarded. It’s consistent to what we have found here in Burlington, people have a human aspect of doing business, which is a smart outlook.”

“These are things, you do them because you can,” Berger said. “Sure it’s my time and my expertise, but you just do them. I grew up in this business and one of the things I remember my grandfather telling me: ‘If you do something good for a client, they tell 10 people, something bad and they tell 100.’ They are acts of kindness. It takes a little bit of time sometimes, but that’s OK.”

Eleven years ago, Patrick Halladay proposed to Juliet with that ring on her birthday, Dec. 29. He will give her the repaired ring as a gift on their anniversary.

Lippa’s Jewelers is located at 112 Church St., or call 862-1042.

“Also on my mind — the best almond croissant I’ve ever had in my life — last Saturday — hot out of the oven from the Backdoor Bakery (my stomach thanks Front Porch Forum).”  -Catherine

This is a “community supported bakery”… locals buy shares in advance and get regular doses of fresh baked yum yums… reduces the risk for the mom and pop owners of this treasured local small business.  Suzanne Podhaizer of Seven Days wrote about it recently.

Citysearch rebuilt its site. “Elements of the revamp include a more intuitive interface, an embrace of social media, a major focus on video, some new twists in mobile, and the development of a full-fledged local ad and content network that offers an alternative to Google’s dominant position.” -Local Onliner

Service Magic is doing very well, despite the general economic conditions.  Co-founder Rodney Rice’s “6 Keys to Success in Local Services” via Andrew Shotland:

1. Build supply before demand
2. Choose the right vertical focus/right branding
3. Execute as a service business, not a dot com (too true)
4. Control customer acquisition costs – apply real business metrics
5. Utilize technologies that make sense now – not in 3, 5 or 10 years
6. Focus on yourself, not the competition (the best advice ever)

Angie’s List took in more VC money recently, bringing it’s total raised to about $66 million.  And Shotland reports Angie Hicks saying “The biggest competitor in the space is ‘your next door neighbor.’”  Interesting.  In this light, Angie’s List offers another way to buy your way out of something you just can’t find the time to do… get to know the neighbors and have conversations with them.  Front Porch Forum, on the other hand, is free and uses things like plumber recommendations among clearly identified nearby neighbors as a way to help connect neighbors and lead toward more vital communities.

And again from Shotland…

The thing I love the most about both Angie’s and Rodney’s talks is that they are both very much outside the local search/Silicon Valley community in some ways (well Angie did raise a bunch of $ from VCs and Rodney did sell out to IAC, but besides that), but they are both incredibly successful.