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Unvarnished: The Go-To Place for Flaming Your Boss

by Matthew Zuras on March 31, 2010 at 12:16 PM

Peter Kazanjy is either completely shameless, or the best boss in the world. His new start-up, Unvarnished, is a social networking site for people to go and post critiques of their professional peers. By that, we mean to say that you can hop on the site to slam your former employer for cutting back your vacation days, or publicly sneer at the PR rep who had arugula in his teeth throughout his whole pitch. (We wonder what Kazanjy's staff might write about him... )

Unvarnished is tethered to Facebook, so, at the moment, you need to receive an invite from a Facebook friend to become part of the network, which is run through Facebook Connect. Also, your Facebook account has to demonstrate a certain amount of activity to be registered, just so that people don't set up fraudulent accounts to flame individuals en masse. And since it's connected to Facebook, your reviews are linked to your account (though other users won't be able to trace your posts back to you).

Yelp and, to a certain extent, Citysearch have both allowed scathing user reviews for businesses. (Citysearch will cave to business owners, however, if reviews rub them in the wrong way.) And Rate My Professors has been established as the go-to place for college brats who want to drunkenly vent their grievances against university faculty who didn't like their interpretation of Proust. But now the entire professional world is about to get catty. Or is it?

The big difference between Unvarnished and Yelp/Citysearch is that if someone decides to give you a virtual lambasting on Unvarnished, you have no recourse to delete their review. So, what will stop people from turning Unvarnished into the Hot or Not for execs? We're not sure, just yet -- but we're banking on a level of mature restraint seen less often in the younger Facebook and Myspace circles. On the one hand, Unvarnished may just make behind-your-back sniping more accessible, which may be a boon for clients looking to avoid working with unscrupulous professionals. On the other, Unvarnished could easily devolve into needless back-stabbery, where disgruntled workers post hurtful reviews that could damage careers. [From: Unvarnished, via: ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: business, Citysearch, employment, facebook, PeterKazanjy, reviews, SocialNetworking, top, unvarnished, yelp

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