THE ALGORITHM WOULD HATE TO SEE SOMETHING HAPPEN TO YOUR NICE RESTAURANT

“There has been a long history of people accusing Yelp of monkeying around with reviews in exchange for money. The allegations are disappointing, not only because they are false, but because they ignore empirical evidence in favor of conspiracy theories.”

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, on why his company doesn’t need to fiddle with its reviews to extract money from businesses, Yelp Blog, 26 February 2010

IT’S EVEN HARDER TO SPIT

“This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million…. I realize this news is difficult to swallow.”

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, on the abject failure of his turnaround plan for the smartphone maker, Digits, 25 February 2010

MONEY GOES WHERE IT IS FABULOUS

“In a bit of strange and disturbing news, Fabulis discovered today that someone(s) at Citibank had decided arbitrarily to block Fabulis’s bank account due to what was described to us on the phone as ‘objectionable content’ on our blog.”

Fabulis CEO Jason Goldberg, on his ultragay startup getting cut off by a censorious banker, Fabulis Blog, 24 February 2010

“Money goes where it is wanted and stays where it is well treated, and that’s all she wrote.”

Former Citibank CEO Walter Wriston, on banking, Wired, October 1996