" />PagesHomeAboutLSATwitterNew Documentary Exhumes Yelp ‘Extortion’ Allegations That Won’t Go AwayTweetPlaintiffs in multiple lawsuits have unsuccessfully argued that Yelp is a “shake-down” racket that manipulates reviews to encourage SMBs to advertise and punish those that don’t. At the heart of these claims is Yelp’s controversial and often misunderstood “review filter.”Now a new crowdfunded documentary seeks to make the same argument to the broader public. A press release and several articles on it yesterday were being blamed for a drop in Yelp’s stock. (The stock has recovered today.) The kickstarter project has raised roughly $17,000 of its $60,000 goal.The claims in the trailer (below) are pretty sensational — all of which have been made multiple times before. There’s a good deal of merchant resentment (even bitterness) out there against Yelp and that continues to fuel what might be called “magical thinking” about the operation of the review filter.Nonetheless the persistence of these rumors and beliefs about the connection between reviews and advertising on Yelp suggests that some of the often inexperienced salespeople have contributed to the misperceptions that continue to plague Yelp. And I continue to be surprised by the strength of these rumors and the fact that many industry insiders believe them as well.Why do you think these rumors and beliefs about Yelp persist despite waves of unsuccessful litigation? Do you think it’s a “rogue salesperson” issue or is it a function of salespeople under pressure implying an ads-reviews connection to close new accounts? Do you think it’s a more systemic sales training issue that the management is not addressing? Or do you actually believe the “extortion” claims are real though unproven?0 Comments »0March 202015Posted inLegalLocal SearchUser-generated contentFacebook: We’re Building a Customer Service Organization for SMBsTweetFacebook’s Jonathan Czaja was interviewed by StreetFight this week. Czaja is a terrific guy who came to Facebook about a year ago from retailer Bonobos. Czaja defends Facebook’s throttling of organic News Feed reach and says that the company’s ad programs are evolving.Perhaps the biggest “reveal” of the article is that Facebook is investing “heavily in building a customer service organization because we realize small business require a level of support that we’re not providing. For instance, we’re testing live chat capabilities today, so we can talk with Facebook advertisers to do things like screen sharing and we’re close to testing voice support as well.”Here are a couple of other interesting statements from Czaja:A decline in organic reach does limit the amount in which you can communicate with your customers in the way you used to be able to do on the platform . . . There’s still a lot of value to