There are probably just as many travel content sites as there are approaches to producing that content. TripAdvisor has user submitted reviews, new entrant Oyster is actively hiring “professional reviewers” to travel the globe and chronicle their hotel experiences, and Wikitravel gives users free reign to write, edit, and publish travel guides. These are three distinct takes on generating content, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.
User generated content sites comes under fire every so often with allegations of fake content. (For a heated diatribe on the topic, Arthur Frommer is a good resource.) Unfortunately, this is just the reality of a competitive marketplace in a world filled with UGC. If a restaurant thinks it can bring in more people by writing a few fake reviews about itself, undoubtedly some will try. There are a few ways to combat the fake reviews. For example, TripAvisor’s CEO recently explained in an interview with Christopher Elliott that “every review is screened,” and “a team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious ones.” Other sites, like Expedia, only let customers with confirmed receipts post reviews. Another user generated review site, Yelp, encourages businesses to participate on the site and respond to negative criticism rather than post fake reviews to influence customers.
Wikipedia is the poster child for user generated content, and it’s interesting to note that it is rarely implicated in any faulty content accusations. But why not? Why isn’t Wikipedia being constantly overrun by petty commercial interests? Couldn’t an online music store simply edit the Michael Jackson wiki and add links to his albums on their site? Of course they could. But the community would undo it immediately. (Don’t believe me? Try it! You’ll be amazed how quickly the community will pounce on your wiki spamming.)
Wikitravel and wikiHow are other great examples of the user generated content community taking care of the content. Anyone can contribute and changes will be published live, but if the content is inaccurate, poorly written, or somehow tainted by commercial interests, you can bet that the community is going to roll back the changes. When you give control of the site to the community, they respond by treating it with respect. (Are any review sites letting their UGC community moderate the reviews? Let us know in the comments.)
Our take on User Generated Content is a little different–we actually use it to inform our search results. If a user searches for Montreal architecture, how do we know what pictures to show? Our search engine actually uses the list of all the Montreal building entries in our index to determine what to display:
If there’s no entry for a particular building, it’s probably because it’s not interesting. Users also have the ability to actually add new buildings (or anything else) to our index, so our search results actually become more relevant when users submit content.
With so many sites utilizing so many approaches, one thing is for sure: user generated content is here to stay.
