Brief · Food & Wine
Even for Desperate Restaurants, Fake Reviews Just Aren't Worth It
When Yelp was first launched in 2004, it flopped. The company’s initial model of an email-based referral service failed to take off until its creators realized users were taking the platform into their own hands; in lieu of sending one another recommendations via email chain, they began using a “hidden” link at the bottom of the startup’s website to write unsolicited reviews of everything from doc