Thursday 30th June 2011 - Published by Lara Page - Account Manager
Do You Trust Anonymous Opinions? Nope, We Didn’t Think So.
The problems caused by online review sites go way beyond fraudulent reviews from disgruntled employees, business owners and their relatives.
The developers of Trust Mico, an innovative new online recommendations website, set to launch on Monday 18thJuly, have urged consumers to “take a tip from their friends”, when looking for great new businesses to try , rather than spending hours trawling through the countless opinions of total strangers on review sites.
Research has strongly indicated that one of the main problems with review sites is that they don’t actually give people what they want. 90% of those taking part in one survey* identified that recommendations from friends and other people we know are trusted significantly more than any other source of information on a business.
Further research**, conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Microsoft, surveyed 624 people, to find out what they used their social networks for. The most popular response, by far, was to ask friends for recommendations (29%); . next was opinions at 22%.
Trust Mico CEO and Founder, Alex Small said: “Looking at these findings, why then, do we have countless websites giving us opinions from total strangers, when what we really want is recommendations from people we know? More and more studies are showing us that people would much rather take suggestions from people they trust”.
He continued: “I have been misled before by anonymous reviews. In the end I asked myself; what do the comments on a review site mean, if you know nothing about the person leaving them? If an 18-year old student says that a restaurant is "too pricey", is that really too pricey for me? If a multi-millionaire left that comment, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.
"The fact is, if you don’t know even a little about the person leaving the comment, then how do you know if it is relevant for you?” he added.
Trust Mico has been created, with the simple aim of providing people with the UK’s largest business directory, allowing them to search for, find and recommend the businesses they like, and share these recommendations with people they know in their existing social media networks (Facebook, LinkedIn and Email contacts).
As Trust Mico is a positive place for businesses too, they feel happy to offer great incentives and rewards for their customers.
Trust Mico warns of problems caused by review sites - a pr2go story
