We’re extending star ratings on Facebook from mobile to desktop – to make it easier for people to discover great businesses around them. This is beneficial for both businesses and consumers. Star ratings encourage more people to rate a business, making it eligible to appear in News Feed and help others discover a business they didn’t know about previously. For businesses themselves, this also leads to greater brand awareness.
Furthermore, if the cumulative five-star ratings are conspicuously highlighted on Company Pages, they will be much more difficult for people to ignore. Essentially, this could be the answer to the Like conundrum, as it could prove to be an effective method for holding companies to a higher standard. With more emphasis being placed on customer satisfaction, businesses would be obliged to focus more effort and creativity on producing engaging interactive content and outstanding customer service. Lackluster performance in these crucial areas could lead to less than stellar scores on a brand’s Facebook Page… And who knows where else the stars could emerge? What if they were pulled into Instagram profiles? Or Like Boxes on websites? Or embedded posts? And what if these ratings further influence Graph Search and News Feed distribution?
As Facebook competes with the likes of Yelp, Foursquare, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor, Angie's List, etc. for a position in the realm of local search, service recommendation and entertainment discovery platforms, businesses that do not take user generated reviews and ratings seriously will reap serious repercussions sooner or later. All things considered, I believe the key takeaway from this somewhat speculative TechCrunch tip is that, no matter what Facebook decides to do with the five-star rating system, the brands that choose to focus on the quality of their business and real-time audience engagement instead of the quantity of their Likes and followers will shine brighter and become astronomically more relevant to the socially-engaged, outspokenly opinionated consumers of our ever-connected-always-progressing social universe than the brands that refuse to evolve. The brands that provide value to their customers are the brands that will succeed.
Five Star Rating Photo Credit: Yuliana via photopin cc