Yelp relents, allows business owners to respond online

After weeks of increasing anger and bad press, consumer-review site Yelp is finally set to make a massive change in its policy which has, since the site's inception, prohibited business owners from commenting on reviews -- good or bad -- on the pages associated with their commentary. Starting next week, business owners will now be given a voice (and a loud one at that) on their profile pages.

Details about the new "public comments" system are still a little sketchy, but it seems that business owners -- which already need to "claim" their page in order to have any say on it at all -- will be able to respond to individual reviews, eBay-style, rather than only in the abstract.

Businesses are already cheering the move as good news for companies, many who feel they've been slighted in the past by phony reviews from competitors, unreasonable expectations from customers, and downright crazy people who leave comments complaining about products the businesses don't even sell. Yelp reviews have also been central in several lawsuits between businesses and customers who complained about them publicly, so hopefully a more open, two-way communication system will make both sides a bit less litigious.

What could go wrong? I'm happy to see that businesses will have some say on their pages, but the move does run the risk of making the site become a "he said/she said" morass. "The duck was too cold," one user complains. "No it wasn't," says the restaurant. Yelp is already cautioning against the over-use of public comments, noting that "sometimes it's to your advantage not to comment at all... If you're upset, you might write something that will reflect poorly on your business. Wait until you've had some time to think about a review; there may be legitimate concerns brought up in the review that you can address in a constructive way."

In other words: It's great to hear your side of the story, business owners, just not every single time someone makes a gripe. Can't wait to see how this shapes up in the coming weeks.