March 19th, 2012

The Absurdity of Online User Ratings

Is it time to kill the Five Star user review system? I explore the topic for New York Magazine:

When Yelp’s stock shot up 63 percent on March 2, its first full day of trading, commentators couldn’t resist pointing out that investors had given the user-generated ratings site “a five-star review.” The one-to-five scale is everywhere on the web, inviting surfers to become critics: Amazon, Netflix, and the iTunes app store also employ it. There’s just one problem: This democratization of reviewing tends to produce aggregate scores that reveal nothing much at all.

I am a writer currently pursuing my Masters of Fine Arts in fiction at Columbia University.

I was Barack Obama's blogger. I have delivered keynote speeches on storytelling, social media, and social movements at conferences, universities, and events around the world. Interested in having me speak at your event?