Katy Kasmai is to be avoided at all costs. She is a self-described "strategy consultant" at a business called Pierre Noir LLC (whose website does not work/load properly in chrome, how ironic?!) and the co-founder of another nebulous business Xocracy.com. She describes herself as an excellent communicator on her LinkedIn profile, but her actions in real-life would have you begging to differ. They include coordinating an assault on the reviews of a small buiness by Katy and eleven accomplices, most of whom never even visited the business, but nonetheless trashed it on the internet.
She visited a restaurant wearing google glasses, and was politely asked to not wear them. In retaliation, she and her 3,000 plus Google+ followers have extracted a search engine optimized pound of flesh. The restaurant previously had earned high four-star ratings on both Yelp and OpenTable. But the neighborhood blog EV Grieve says the numbers dropped after the restaurant asked a walk-in customer named Katy Kasmai to remove the discomforting front-of-face apparatus late last month.
Suddenly, last week, 13 one-star reviews showed up on the restaurant's Google profile, which, wouldn't ya know it, is the most prominent result when customers search for Feast on Google.
Kasmai is both the founder of Glass NYC (a local community of Explorers™) and the CEO of Xocracy, a startup designed to facilitate "direct democracy" by voting on social and political issues "in real time." After being asked to remove her device, she put all that activist juju towards decimating the score of a seasonal American restaurant.
When the first thing that comes up when you search this restaurant in Google is a 3.1, it can really hurt a small business. Then you have 13 people, which is about half the total reviews, who have never been to our restaurant let alone live in NYC, leave you one-star reviews … it's malicious and technically a violation of Google's own terms for leaving reviews," the Feast manager said. "Again I can understand her leaving the one-star based on her experience, but 12 others with no experience on who we are or what we do is unfair."
One of the one-star Google reviews comes from Eddie Daniels, who lives in Lemont Furnace, Pennsylvania, according to his Google+ profile and has not reviewed any other establishments in New York state.
Management noticed that many of the one-star reviews were written by people who had also posted on Kasmai's Google+ post. It noticed one especially critical review coming from someone who lived in Phoenix.
At the time, this sudden one-star epidemic caused the restaurant's overall Google rating to sink to 2.4. This can hurt or KILL a small business.
An unnamed manager stated: "Again I can understand her (Kasmai) leaving the one-star based on her experience, but 12 others with no experience on who we are or what we do is unfair."
I would not even be as kind as that manager. Katy Kasmai had no right to post a one-star review of a RESTAURANT where she did not even try the food!!
The restaurant also described it as "malicious and technically a violation of Google's own terms for leaving reviews."
By apparently offering one-star reviews en masse, the Glass-wearers only show themselves to be the very thing that Google wishes they weren't: Glassholes.
People who are not public figures have an expectation of privacy at certain places. When some Glasshole (or someone using a smartphone camera) violates that expectation, I suspect there can be repercussions. I am waiting for some Glasshole to be standing in a Courtroom, on the receiving end of a monetary judgment against them.
If the Glassholes think they can wear their Glasses anywhere, let them try to wear them through a security checkpoint at a major airport. I saw a passenger get detained at London Heathrow Airport for not removing their Glass.
If you see someone wearing a Google Glass in your favorite restaurant/bar, go right up to them, with your smartphone and start photographing and recording them. See if they complain about their privacy being violated.
For someone who is supposed to be a consultant to small businesses to go out of her way to coordinate a vicious attack in an effort to ruin a business is deplorable.
Katy Kasmai Reviews
Katy Kasmai is to be avoided at all costs. She is a self-described "strategy consultant" at a business called Pierre Noir LLC (whose website does not work/load properly in chrome, how ironic?!) and the co-founder of another nebulous business Xocracy.com. She describes herself as an excellent communicator on her LinkedIn profile, but her actions in real-life would have you begging to differ. They include coordinating an assault on the reviews of a small buiness by Katy and eleven accomplices, most of whom never even visited the business, but nonetheless trashed it on the internet.
She visited a restaurant wearing google glasses, and was politely asked to not wear them. In retaliation, she and her 3,000 plus Google+ followers have extracted a search engine optimized pound of flesh. The restaurant previously had earned high four-star ratings on both Yelp and OpenTable. But the neighborhood blog EV Grieve says the numbers dropped after the restaurant asked a walk-in customer named Katy Kasmai to remove the discomforting front-of-face apparatus late last month.
Suddenly, last week, 13 one-star reviews showed up on the restaurant's Google profile, which, wouldn't ya know it, is the most prominent result when customers search for Feast on Google.
Kasmai is both the founder of Glass NYC (a local community of Explorers™) and the CEO of Xocracy, a startup designed to facilitate "direct democracy" by voting on social and political issues "in real time." After being asked to remove her device, she put all that activist juju towards decimating the score of a seasonal American restaurant.
When the first thing that comes up when you search this restaurant in Google is a 3.1, it can really hurt a small business. Then you have 13 people, which is about half the total reviews, who have never been to our restaurant let alone live in NYC, leave you one-star reviews … it's malicious and technically a violation of Google's own terms for leaving reviews," the Feast manager said. "Again I can understand her leaving the one-star based on her experience, but 12 others with no experience on who we are or what we do is unfair."
One of the one-star Google reviews comes from Eddie Daniels, who lives in Lemont Furnace, Pennsylvania, according to his Google+ profile and has not reviewed any other establishments in New York state.
Management noticed that many of the one-star reviews were written by people who had also posted on Kasmai's Google+ post. It noticed one especially critical review coming from someone who lived in Phoenix.
At the time, this sudden one-star epidemic caused the restaurant's overall Google rating to sink to 2.4. This can hurt or KILL a small business.
An unnamed manager stated: "Again I can understand her (Kasmai) leaving the one-star based on her experience, but 12 others with no experience on who we are or what we do is unfair."
I would not even be as kind as that manager. Katy Kasmai had no right to post a one-star review of a RESTAURANT where she did not even try the food!!
The restaurant also described it as "malicious and technically a violation of Google's own terms for leaving reviews."
By apparently offering one-star reviews en masse, the Glass-wearers only show themselves to be the very thing that Google wishes they weren't: Glassholes.
People who are not public figures have an expectation of privacy at certain places. When some Glasshole (or someone using a smartphone camera) violates that expectation, I suspect there can be repercussions. I am waiting for some Glasshole to be standing in a Courtroom, on the receiving end of a monetary judgment against them.
If the Glassholes think they can wear their Glasses anywhere, let them try to wear them through a security checkpoint at a major airport. I saw a passenger get detained at London Heathrow Airport for not removing their Glass.
If you see someone wearing a Google Glass in your favorite restaurant/bar, go right up to them, with your smartphone and start photographing and recording them. See if they complain about their privacy being violated.
For someone who is supposed to be a consultant to small businesses to go out of her way to coordinate a vicious attack in an effort to ruin a business is deplorable.