Richard Kohberger (the "blue collar nerd") explains why a reverse-review service — where companies review consumers — has not taken off. He argues the main barriers are fundamental: (1) lack of a reliable unique identifier for consumers (SSNs are infeasible; addresses change), (2) weak incentives for consumers to join or maintain accounts (they can 'burn' accounts and restart), (3) difficulty creating a honey-pot onboarding mechanism outside closed platforms (unlike rideshare), and (4) scale mismatch — far more individuals than companies, so consumer coverage is hard to achieve. He concludes the business model is extremely difficult though not strictly impossible.
What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the blue collar nerd. So I came across this thread on a Facebook page and it got me thinking and I wanted to make a video about it. The post was about this idea, this concept that I see pop up a lot. It's this idea of some sort of, like, reverse review service where a company can review a consumer. Why do consumers get to be the only ones who are allowed to talk smack? Why can't it go the other way? It's pretty straightforward, right? Like, surely this is not a new idea. So why hasn't it taken off yet? Well, to me, the answer comes down to the F word, that nasty F word that I don't like to talk about much. That's right, fundamentals. See, there are a lot of problems that make a business model like that really difficult to pull off once you start kind of playing out the chess game in your head. Problem number one, and probably the biggest problem, is you need some sort of unique identifier. So surely there's more than one Kenneth Osborne in the world, right? So how do you identify? Okay, I'm reviewing this specific Kenneth Osborne. You're probably not going to be able to convince the public to input their Social Security numbers into some website just so that companies can talk some smack about them, right? Maybe you could use, like, their address. But people move. Now, for companies, this is a lot easier because companies sign up for listings with Google, with Yelp, with whatever platform they put in their tax identification number. And then that account, that listing serves as their unique identifier. But companies are incentivized to do that because they get business, they get a lot of revenue by being on these platforms. So let's say we come out with this service, right? And this is the service that's going to allow companies to review their consumers. Why would I, as just some regular everyday consumer, join that website? It doesn't seem worth the trouble, especially since on these other platforms, I'm the only one with the microphone. So we would need some sort of honey pot to get people to actually join that platform. This works with things like rideshare services, right? Like Uber and Lyft. Every time you use one of those services, you review your driver, your driver also reviews you. But that's the deal you agreed to for the right to use that service. That sort of structure doesn't exist with businesses like H Vac Plumbing. It's too decentralized. But let's toss that aside, right? Let's say we solved that Problem. We figured out what our honeypot is. We've got a way to make people join this platform. We still have a major problem, which is that it is significantly easier for a regular, everyday consumer to just burn their account and start over if they get a bad review than it is to do that if you're a company. Again, it goes back to incentives. If I'm a company, then this listing is a big factor in things like my SEO because. Because I'm using these listings to get business to make money. If I'm on a service like that, as a consumer, I'm not incentivized in that way. I'm not trying to make money. So if a company leaves me a bad review, this guy sucks. He didn't pay his bill. He was a big pain to work with. I would just delete my account and start over. Well, maybe now you're thinking, okay, well, we'll just have them enter their Social Security number in when they make an account, and then they can't burn that. They can't start over. That is their account. Okay, but now you've greatly increased the friction of your service, and you've greatly increased your support load now. Now if people get locked out of their account or they made an account and they forgot about it because it was a long time ago or whatever, I mean, all of that, they can't just start a new account anymore. That's gonna cause some problems. And again, as a consumer, why go through any of that at all? There are already services out there that serve me first, where I'm the one with the microphone, where I get to speak. And yes, the company can reply, but really, I'm the primary voice there. And this hypothetical service that we're building, it is completely worthless unless a large number of the population is on. Again, you can't just review somebody who's not on it, who doesn't have an account on it, because again, we don't have that unique identifier. We can't just say, John Smith sucks because it doesn't help anybody. So we need a lot of people, the majority of the population, on this thing. Which brings us to our next problem. There are way more individuals than there are companies in the world, Like, a lot more. And these review services that everybody uses, they're only useful because most companies are on them, but they're on them because they're incentivized to be. They make money by being on them. Consumers have no such incentive. So it would be really, really difficult to get the majority of the population on an app like this. Now, am I saying this business model is totally impossible? It'll never happen? Not necessarily. But what I am saying is that it would be really, really hard to pull off. And when I hear people talk about this, or in this case, see people talk about this, like on a Facebook thread, I don't know, I see a lot of stuff come up, like, oh, it would be a big PR problem, or it's not legal, which I' found any evidence of. And hey, maybe there would be PR issues and legal issues. But beyond that, the fundamentals of the business model are just really, really tricky. Like, maybe impossible tricky. I'm not gonna say impossible, but it's up there. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Hey, what do you think about this? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comment section down below. Be sure to hit, like, if you enjoyed this video and subscribe to my channel. 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