Yelp Review/Analysis
KalmanVarga
What is Yelp?
Yelp Inc. (Yelp), formerly Yelp! Inc., connects people with local
businesses. Its users contribute reviews of every type of local business, from
restaurants, boutiques and salons to dentists, mechanics and plumbers. Its
platform provides local businesses with a range of free and paid services, which
help them to engage with consumers at moment when they are deciding where to
spend their money. The Company generates revenue from the sale of advertising
on its Website to local businesses and national brands. In addition, it enables local
businesses and national advertisers to deliver advertising to local audiences
through its platform.
Yelp had an average of approximately 78 million monthly unique visitors
in Q2 2012
In addition to reviews, you can use Yelp to find events, lists and to talk
with other Yelpers.
Every business owner (or manager) can setup a free account to post photos
and message her customers.
Paying advertisers can never change or re-order their reviews.
Operating in the US, Australia, & Europe.
Vancouver Sun dubbed yelp “the voice of the people”
Ownership/ Who runs it?
From yelp Site Terms of Service: “As between you and Yelp, you own Your Content. We
own the Yelp Content, including but not limited to visual interfaces, interactive features,
graphics, design, compilation, computer code, products, software, aggregate user review
ratings, and all other elements and components of the Site excluding Your Content, User
Content and Third Party Content”
Trust worthy?
(FROM Venture beat online news about innovation and foreword thinking executives,)
Yelp has a lot of data that it doesn’t seem to be using:
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The distribution of ratings by a given rater. I’m a tough grader (as regular
readers may have noticed). If I rate something 5-stars, that’s a really big deal.
Others give away 5-star ratings like candy. Individual distributions should be
factored in.
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Ratings of similar places. Different types of venues should be grouped
together, not sorted against an arbitrary scale. I can appreciate a great dive bar
like Zeitgeist, but it’s not the same as Press Club.
Anomalous reviews. If someone regularly reviews low-end places and than has
a review at a high-end restaurant, that review should be downweighted versus
someone who regularly eats at high-end restaurants.
Yelp can improve dramatically based on the data that it already has.It
needs a model similar to that of Netflix, where each rating is personally
relevant, not universally irrelevant.
- in response to this add readers commented that they do not trust yelp
reviewers.
Public display of qualities and fortunes/self advertising
Connection to Facebook and how “normal” people review and share to their
Facebook to boost their “foodie image”
Commerce/money making
(From MSN Stock News August 2012, Jonathan Berr)
“Angie's List and Yelp have ventured into Groupon's (GRPN -1.00%)
territory by offering daily deals. Groupon is struggling to make this business
model work and there is no reason to expect Yelp and Angie's List will have an
easier time. Though local deals have gotten a bad name on Wall Street, some
consumers love them. These businesses will do well if they can figure out how to
provide the service profitably.”
Yelp is not a money making company, Businesses can target their
advertising better on Angies list
Therefore Yelp serves the consumer “the people” best
New money making in Online reptaiotn Protector firms, 700 millions
dollar a year business
Influence/cloud/how many people involved
Yelp was founded San Francisco in 2004 to help people find great local
businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics
When Yelp was new on the web it was dedicated to user reviews of
restaurants and other service establishments. Over they years with integration or
Facebook, and now its own online community
Social Approval
“one bad review isn’t bad, in fact if you have nothing but good review son yelp or
nagies list, looks suspicious, especially if the wording in similar”
Codes of Conduct
General Guidelines FROM SITE
Yelp allows users to contribute different kinds of content, including reviews, photos,
events, votes, tips, private messages, and more. Playing nice isn't rocket science,
but just in case, we've put together these general guidelines. Please also read the
guidelines below for specific types of content that you might contribute to the site.
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Inappropriate content: Colorful language and imagery is fine, but there's no
need for threats, harassment, lewdness, hate speech, and other displays of bigotry.
Conflicts of interest: Your contributions should be unbiased and objective. For
example, you shouldn't write reviews of your own business or employer, your
friends' or relatives' business, or businesses in your networking group.
Promotional content: Unless you're using your Business Owners Account to add
content to your business's profile page, we generally frown upon promotional
content. Let's keep the site useful for consumers and not overrun with commercial
noise from every user.
Relevance: Please make sure your contributions are relevant and appropriate to
the forum. For example, reviews aren't the place for rants about a business's
employment practices, political ideologies, extraordinary circumstances, or other
matters that don't address the core of the consumer experience.
Privacy: Don't publicize other people's private information. Please don't post
close-up photos of other people without their permission, and please don't post
other people's full names unless you're referring to service providers who are
commonly identified by their full names.
Intellectual property: Don't swipe content from other sites or users. You're a
smart cookie, so write your own reviews and take your own photos, please!
Which types of interactions are possible?
Business and consumer/ consumer to consumer/ yelp stories to user
Marketing Space
A small dentist office in NYC paid 315 dollars a month for this add to be
shown 500 times on the site.
(Las Vegas Review Journal, May 2012 Caitlin McGary)
The Las Vegas town hall is the third in a nationwide series Yelp launched
to help small-business owners be proactive about their online reputations. The site
allows businesses to register accounts, add photos, and post deals, discounts and
check-in offers.
If business owners opt out of the conversation, it carries on without them.
Some 85 percent of consumers use Yelp to find local businesses.
The worst thing you can do is be super defensive," said Misti Yang, who
manages the Las Vegas community for Yelp. "The best you can do is say, 'Thank
you.' "
"This is probably the best time to open a business, because there's no way
we could have afforded the advertising,"
_ in other words, businesses can use reviews as advertising, it
doesn’t cost them anything, and if they make an account with yelp
they can be present in this conversations, again free advertising.
This is where their “public face” can be seen for free so, by
listening to negative feedback and saying thank you can turn a
negative review in to a positive look on the establishment, they are
listening and trying to improve.
Gathering Space/ Semi private space? Alone space?
Gathering space if your in the community. As a nonmember browsing
reviews, you are not involved in the community, you are simply a consumer of the
site. If its trust your worried about you would want to join to cross reference users
and their reviews.
As a non user, Yelp is simply a CONSUMPTION SPACE
Consumption space?
See above