Qype puts power firmly into consumers’ hands
I was fortunate enough to meet with Isabelle Ratinaud, MD Europe of Qype, at London OCC a few weeks back. She explained how Qype was putting the power back into the hands of consumers with its local review website. Qype takes word of mouth to new levels and magnifies the sorts of conversations that previously only took place in pubs to a new level - a worldwide level.
In the ‘old days’ you’d hear about good or bad service in discussions you had with people you met. In the days of email, IM, social media and sites like Qype this word of mouth power is not just limited to the five people you meet in the pub, but expanded to the millions of people online.
Qype, which is Europe’s largest local review service, currently has around 40,000 registered users and more than 60,000 reviews, prompting Red Herring to cite it as one of the 100 sites to watch for 2007.
What I particularly liked about Qype is the way that users are encouraged to participate by earning ‘points’ and achieving a Qype ranking. Its a simple system, but one that does recognize users’ involvement and stimulate them to take action.
Of course there are also the expected social networking aspects, in that each user can create a profile of themselves, complete with tags that denote their interests, a record of all their reviews, even upload photos of themselves - a nice tip-of-the-hat to Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. Registered users can also add others as friends (contacts), and send person to person messages. It has a nice community feel which all goes towards establishing a great feeling of trust in the service.