What have you reviewed for me lately?

I was watching an Eddie Murphy comedy performance the other night, and he was talking about Janet Jackson’s “What have you done for me lately” (ahh, the memories ).

That came to mind when I was just reading a post about the importance of local reviews in the decision making process for individuals.  The article cited local research from comScore and the Kelsey Group that showed that more than 75% of users think that reviews are very important in their decision process, and that consumers value other consumer’s opinions more than those of professions (we noticed this at Amazon as well, and verified it with A/B testing!).

Two other really interesting tidbids:

I think those two points are critical — I don’t think that the sheer volume of reviews for an individual teacher/class/business are paramount (although someone with a ton of reviews will obviously indicate popularity or notoriety!), but rather their presence at all.  That is – 1-2 glowing reviews will likely be all that’s necessary to help someone make a first step toward learning, and likewise, a single well-written and obviously fact-based negative review will do the opposite.  That’s what we’re trying to do — provide valuable decision-making learning information for students (and parents of learners)  – then, step back and let the interactions happen!