Twitter is dead set on playing a vital role in the media industry, which is why rumors of its latest acquisition would make a lot of sense.

The social network has allegedly purchased Bluefin Labs, a startup that provides social analytics for users while they watch television. The information comes from a BusinessInsider report published today that cites an anonymous source. We’ve reached out to Twitter for confirmation of the sale as well as further clarification of its terms.

The acquisition price, according to BI’s report, is said to be Twitter’s largest purchase ever. Bluefin Labs currently has about $20 million in funding from a variety of investors, so it’s likely that the acquisition price is quite a bit more than that — especially after last night’s Super Bowl 47 broke many viewing and participation records.

Twitter has worked with Bluefin Labs in the past to provide social analytics for live televised events, and recently partnered with Nielsen to develop new social TV ratings.

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If your answer is never, you’re probably 75 or older and think “yelp” is a sound a dog makes.  But for the rest of us, we know that reviews are critical in influencing purchase decisions.  So critical that someone even started a business writing favorable book reviews called GettingBookReviews.com (charging, of course, $99 a pop).

If you’ve ever thought about paying for inauthentic endorsements like this, you better pump the breaks because third party review sites are now making it as obvious as Snooki’s spray tan that you’ve invested in fake reviews.

Yelp recently created consumer alerts for business pages that remain for 90 days when they sniff out phony reviews. The alert reads the following: “We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business. We weren’t fooled, but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but also honest businesses who play by the rules.”

Similarly, TripAdvisor says they have “zero tolerance for fake reviews.” If they believe that a hotel review is contrived, they will remove the review, ensure that the property is penalized in the site’s rankings, and possibly even post a message alerting millions of travelers on what they’ve found.

Considering the clout online reviews hold in consumer purchase behavior, it’s no surprise that some business owners feel compelled to invest in sham reviews:

• A one-star increase on Yelp leads to a 5% to 9% increase in revenue (source: Michael Luca, Harvard Business School).
• 70% of global consumers trust online reviews, an increase of 15 percent in four years (source: Nielsen).
• 80% of consumers change their mind after reading a single bad review (source: Cone Communications).
• One negative review can cost you 30 customers (source: Convergys).
• 7 in 10 who read reviews share them with friends, family & colleagues thus amplifying their impact (Deloitte & Touche)

But here’s the bottom line:

A few “positive” reviews won’t stop customers from continuing to complain about your crappy service or overcooked food. Instead of taking the easy (and sleazy) way out, listen to the concerns your customers are voicing and improve your business. Social media and third party review sites have put the power in the hands of the consumer. Forever. If companies don’t become customer-focused, customer-centric, customer-obsessed, they risk tarnishing their brand reputation and ultimately, losing their company.

 How to improve online ratings the honest way

The problem that many business owners face is that reviews on third party review sites might not legitimately reflect the satisfaction of their customers. Many know they have happy diners or guests; but as the saying goes, “Haters gonna hate.” Pissed off customers are sometimes more inclined to write a damaging review while the satisfied customers will recommend the restaurant or hotel at a cocktail party instead of putting their praise online.

Here’s the solution:

Find those customers who are enthusiastic about your brand, product, or service (AKA your authentic Brand Advocates), and make it drop dead easy for them to write raving reviews.

1. Ask your customers via email, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, website, or elsewhere: “On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends?” Those who answer 9 or 10 are your Advocates.
2. Give Advocates the tools to rate and review your product or property, or direct them directly to the relevant third party review site where they can give you a 5-star review.
3. By identifying your Advocates, you’re creating a virtual marketing force that you can leverage for much more than just reviews. They’ll gladly share offers or other announcements like a new location opening, a new chef, or a remodel of your hotel with their social networks. They’ll create personal stories about how they rekindled their love at your resort or made a new friend with one of the gregarious employees who waited on them.

Whatever you do, don’t pay for reviews or recommendations of any sort. There is no longer room for businesses that don’t understand the importance of authenticity and transparency in the era of social media.

Instead, tap into the enthusiasm of your highly satisfied customers and empower them to fight negative word of mouth for you.

By Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance (@carafuggetta)

photo credit: Dave77459 via photopin cc

Nielsen has just announced a new form of television ratings. The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating will tell us all how socially engaging a given program is, based on Twitter users’ conversations and updates.

It’s one small step for Twitter, one giant leap for the legitimacy of second-screen data for marketing.

With a new agreement between the two entities, Nielsen will have data from Twitter that will allow it to create a “syndicated-standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter.” Both parties say the new metric should be ready for the beginning of the new television season in the fall of 2013.

“Ultimately, we have one goal for this new metric: to make watching TV with Twitter even better for you, the TV fan,” Twitter media chief Chloe Sladden wrote today on the company blog.

For its part, Nielsen said in a statement that it considers Twitter the best source of real-time social data on TV shows. Most importantly, the vast majority of tweets are public rather than private, meaning Twitter data is easier to access than data from just about any other social source.

Twitter data won’t replace Nielsen’s current system of TV-tracking boxes; rather, it will act as a supplement in an industry (the ad industry) where more information is always better.

Google surprised a lot of people last fall when it announced that it was buying restaurant ratings company Zagat. Now, Google is finally making some moves with the buy via Google+ Local, an overhaul of Google’s local search.

With the revamp, Zagat reviews are now a key part of Google+ Local. The new local search adds restaurant ratings to Google Search, Maps, and as a new tab in Google+. Google will also be updating its Google Maps app for Android and iOS to add in new Google+ Local results.

As for the design, you’ll notice that Google’s five-star reviews are gone and replaced with Zagat’s 30-point scale. On the Google+ side, the Zagat reviews are joined by personal recommendations of connected Google+ users, which adds another layer of relevancy to search results and reviews. Clearly, Google is still serious about integrating all of its services into one cohesive whole.

All in all, it appears that Zagat is finally justifying the $151 million that Google paid for it. At the time of the acquisition, Google said that the Zagat reviews would become a cornerstone of its local offerings. Judging by the recent shifts and changes, its clear that that’s still true.

You can see a video detailing Google+ Local below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google quietly updated its Google Maps app for Android this week, a move that helps shed more light on the company’s local search strategy and its decision to purchase reviews service Zagat yesterday.

Specifically, Google Maps version 5.10.0 now lets users add specific photos to Places and automatically shows places they’ve rated 4 or 5 stars on the map, which gives them a better look at places they’ve enjoyed in the past. To illustrate, you can now take photos of food or decor from a restaurant and easily attach it to a location.

The new features show that Google wants users to take Places and its reviews more seriously when using their smartphones. Right now, the reviews pull from CitySearch and random users. Zagat’s reviews will bolster that selection.

Zagat’s reviews might encourage more users to actually check Google Places for recommendations and to write reviews. Google basically wants you to pull up Google Maps rather than apps such as Yelp and Urbanspoon.

When I wrote about Google’s Zagat buy yesterday, I saw it as Google’s chance to take away share from Yelp when it comes to reviews. It appears that attack on Yelp and other competitors will come on several fronts, with the desktop and mobile versions of Maps and search.

Google has learned that if you don’t have a good reviews ecosystem in place, there’s little incentive to post there, even if it’s super easy to access. When Zagat’s content starts showing up in Maps and on the staggering number of Android phones in the marketplace, look for Google Places to finally start exploding.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google today announced on its blog the release of Hotpot, a recommendation engine for local businesses based on you and your friends’ ratings. Hotpot is an addition to the company’s Google’s Places initiative, a campaign to get local business owners to claim their venues, verify information and engage with customers.

Hotpot is a pretty simple concept, but when connected with a business directory of more than 50 million places, it can be a powerful consumer tool. Users sign-in and are prompted to search for a general theme and establish their location. The default search is “restaurants”, and Google did a decent job of finding me without me having to put in my exact location. For accurate results, take the time to enter your town; otherwise, you may end up with results that are 50 miles away.

The real recommendation part of the feature comes from users proactively rating businesses they’ve patronized. Ratings are on a 5 star system — 5 stars being excellent and 1 star being terrible. As a user rates places, Google’s Hotpot determines other places the person may be interested in visiting. For example, if I rate an Italian restaurant very high, the tool may suggest other Italian restaurants.

If you decide to share your ratings with friends, you can then see places they recommend. The idea is that if someone is your “friend”, then they may like similar food, clothes, etc. Google gives the example of visiting a foreign town and being able to look up ratings left by a friend who’s a local.

Hotpot is a pretty simple recommendation engine, but when coupled with Google and its consumer reach it could be a fairly popular resource. The tool appears to combine the best of two worlds: Yelp and its reviews and Foursquare’s sharing of someone’s location.

Several other companies already have similar offerings on the market, including SoGeo, a service that collects and analyzes location data for users, which recently unveiled Whatser, a free mobile application that suggests where to go based on places that you like and that your friends like. Foursquare may also be testing a new recommendation feature for its popular mobile check-in application based on the large amount of data it has on the businesses its users frequent.

Google has also created a Hotpot rating application so that users can quickly and easily rate and find friends while on their phones. The company also upgraded Google Maps on Android to allow users to input and view ratings on the go.