Everyone's a food critic

Remember the "Three's Company" spinoff "Three's a Crowd", where Jack Tripper has his own restaurant "Jack's Place"? In one episode Jack is getting reviewed by a prominent food critic. He prepares all day for the visit, goes the extra mile in the kitchen and tells his staff to make sure everything is just right. The critic comes in, takes two bites of the food and then leaves. Jack thinks he going to get a bad write-up and sends him a nasty letter, but it turns out he gets a favorable review and suddenly Jack's Place is the 'in' spot to eat. Jack then semi-comedic-ly tries to re-call the letter.

In our modern day and age of bloggers, yelpers and diggers, the entire game has changed. What was once reliant upon yellow page ads and newspaper reviews has turned into the ultimate consumer controlled bonanza, flipping the entire industry on it's head. No longer can any company afford to let their guard down or miss the opportunity to treat a customer with the kind of personal attention a traditional media critic might receive, since we've all got bullhorns, and many have a much, much larger readership.

While the whole Web 2.0 revolution has been touted as 'user-generated content', 'turning the consumer into the producer' and 'friends/social networks', I think the true power of the net is in raising the bar on information exchange and giving everyone the best opportunity to find the ultimate deal on a used laptop, tips on house training a puppy or the best place to go hiking in Yosemite. In a nutshell, a true resource for our real-world needs, empowering and created by those who know.

Beyond that, it's a whole lot of flirting...