@article{c00dfb2fc0f3404d8468b0c564461d74,
title = "Powering the local review engine at Yelp and Google: intensive and extensive approaches to crowdsourcing spatial data",
abstract = "This paper explores how two major location-based services in the United States, Yelp and Google Maps, use volunteer top-contributor programmes to ensure access to reliable spatial data. Through the Elite Squad programme, paid Yelp staff take an active curatorial role growing the company{\textquoteright}s reviewer base in select urban regions in North America. Google{\textquoteright}s Local Guides programme uses an extensive, self-service model to collect data on a global scale. Both companies enrol and motivate users in ways that present unpaid review labour as affirming, with emphases that reflect their scalar strategies: Yelp stressing tight-knit sociality and Google global altruism.",
keywords = "crowdsourcing, digital labour, local reviews, location-based services, spatial data, user-generated content",
author = "Payne, {Will B.}",
note = "Funding Information: The author thanks the special issue editors Jim Thatcher, Ryan Burns and Craig Dalton; four anonymous reviewers for detailed suggestions that significantly improved the final article; Evangeline McGlynn for useful feedback on early versions of the figures; Agnieszka Leszczynski, who co-organized the 2019 AAG session {\textquoteleft}Political Economies of Geolocation{\textquoteright}, in which this material was first presented; the other presenters at the session (Peta Mitchell, Chiara Iacovone, Luis Alvarez Leon, Harrison Smith and Jeremy Crampton), and discussants David Wachsmuth and Dillon Mahmoudi; all the interview subjects for their time and insights; colleagues at both the University of California – Berkeley and Rutgers for their support during a transcontinental move during a global pandemic; the author{\textquoteright}s family; contributors to QGIS, Natural Earth, R, Inkscape and ggplot2. The typeface on all figures is DIN Pro by Albert-Jan Pool. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 Regional Studies Association.",
year = "2021",
doi = "10.1080/00343404.2021.1910229",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "55",
pages = "1878--1889",
journal = "Regional Studies",
issn = "0034-3404",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "12",
}