10 Great Sites for Local Content and Mobile Devices
PC World Latest Technology News — ... Yelp : Yelp has emerged as the leading destination for determining whether the launderette, restaurant, therapist, or manicurist across town or around the corner is worth a visit. Remember that virtually ...

Yellow Pages No Longer an Exclusive
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... aspect of the Yellow Pages business has been lost — exclusivity. During the days before the Internet and the massive sharing of data with Google, Yahoo and others, the content and data of the Yellow Pages were exclusive to the print directories or their online counterparts. While U.S. publisher Internet Yellow Pages sites bemoan the fact that they do not enjoy healthy traffic levels, when we look to the new breed of local search players like Yellowbot, Yelp and Brownbook and listen to search platform developers like Exalead, ...

Wikia lets companies add their widgets as search results
VentureBeat — If you want the most useful information possible to appear in response to a search, why not allow information portals like the community news aggregator Digg and travel site Kayak add it themselves? Search Wikia is opening itself to allow companies to do just that, by adding their own widget to search results. Wikia was started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in 2006 to try to take monetary advantage of the user contributions that drove the non-profit online encyclopedia to fame. The answer to the question above is “Because you can’t trust other ...

MapQuest Fights Back with Local Features
The Inquisitr » Technology — ... Through a partnership with Yelp, a four-year-old startup in Silicon Valley, the company will start putting local business reviews within its mapping results today, as ...

5 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss
ReadWriteWeb — ... I recommend starting with positive feedback. Grab a sampling of social media feedback from your customers (just Google your company name or check Yelp.com, if nothing else). ...

BooRah launches API to share restaurant reviews
Webware.com — BooRah, a service that uses semantic technology to find restaurant reviews online and combine them to give users a rating, announced that it has launched a new API for websites and businesses that want to display the company's reviews on their own sites. The API allows ...

Yahoo! Search rolls out ‘Citysearch, Zagat, SearchMonkey’ with ‘Yelp, Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Shortcut’ - Enhanced Results
D' Technology Weblog — Yahoo! Search launched Citysearch, Zagat SearchMonkey applications for all users, together with the Yelp, Yahoo! Local enhanced results, as well as Yahoo! Shortcut for faster and more intuitive local businesses search. Citysearch’s app provides ratings, hours of operation, addresses and phone numbers for millions of restaurants directly on the search results page. It also includes deep links to each ...

Yahoo's Openness To Search
WebProNews Feed — [image] The Right Step to Get Back in the Game? Yahoo announced that they have integrated a couple of applications from their SearchMonkey project into everyday search results for users of the Yahoo search engine. The two integrated apps are from Citysearch and Zagat , which Yahoo intends to use for improved local search results along with Yelp and its own Yahoo Local results. Citysearch Results on Yahoo SearchMonkey is Yahoo Search's open platform, which allows developers and site owners to make results more useful and relevant ...

Online user reviews: Can they be trusted?
Latest from Computerworld — ... , Yelp , and even the sites of tech product manufacturers, such as Dell. They're everywhere. But it's the fraudulent reviews -- positive reviews contributed by "readers" paid by the company being evaluated -- that worry critics and advocates alike. ...

Social Media Workflow on the iPhone
louisgray.com — By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter) I wanted to write a slightly different type of iPhone app review today. Instead of focusing specifically on one or two apps, I wanted to bring you with me as I walk through the tools I rely on daily as I check out the social media ‘scene.' Also, I'd like to prefix by stating that the iPhone has been an amazingly capable and flexible platform for web-based activities such as this. Not only does it work better for me than any mobile smartphone I've ...

CitySquares finds funds for “hyper local” info
VentureBeat — ... (15.1 million unique users in August) and trendy Yelp (which had 1.5 unique users last year at this time). It’s still unclear what sets CitySquares apart. It’s goal to provide ...

Just learned a new word: sheep + people = sheeple, as in "the Palin-ites at rally in Asheville are sheeple..."
Politweets — ... hoodie, preparing for a long day of packing... 6:01 AM Oct 25th from web Packing and attempting to get my lethargic cats to play... 8:30 PM Oct 24th from TwitterBerry Trying to wrangle up more boxes for packing... 9:42 AM Oct 24th from TwitterBerry CMJ'd this week. Constant impromptu concert happening in the park next to my apartment... 5:01 AM Oct 24th from web Dinner at Fiore with my mama. Their endive salad is so good, I had to www.yelp.com about it... 5:38 PM Oct 23rd from TwitterBerry Fetching the ...

Gentrify: A web app to find your “natural habitat”
VentureBeat — ... a charge that could be leveled at many startup employees, too. Salvation is at hand, however. There’s a fun new web application called Gentrify that can bring the long gentrification nightmare to an end. Now, people can see how much they’re going to drive up a neighborhood’s rent before they move in. Created by a team of developers for the Rails Rumble app contest, Gentrify mashes together data from Craigslist, Yelp and Google Maps to “help the elite urban bourgeois find their natural ...

Under the Radar Conference Preview: GoodRec
Fast Company - Technology — ...  takes a very different approach from the services it'll inevitably be compared with. It was built from the outset with an eye towards offering on-the-go recommendations via mobile phone for the sort of things you're most likely to ask your friends about. Restaurants, bars, and local businesses like a Yelp , yes, but also books, movies, wine, and other products such as consumer electronics. Reviews are tagged with "thumbs up," "thumbs down," or "mixed bag" and you get 160 characters to explain. The thumbs up or down feature solves the problem that star-rating systems: ...

Some Thoughts on Walled Gardens and Social Operating Systems
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... and my wife doesn't, I'd like her to know what I'm doing via the service even though she isn't a Twitter user. If my friends use Yelp to recommend restaurants in the area, I'd like to find out about the restaurants even though I'm not a Yelp user. And so on. ...

Friday Memos
WSJ.com: Independent Street — On Fridays we’ll be linking to a roundup of useful, informative, or entertaining articles and blog posts related to entrepreneurship from across the Web. Have a great weekend! - Online customer review site Yelp.com is introducing a new feature that lets business owners write descriptions of themselves. [Entrepreneur] - Don’t forget to ask these questions before buying a business. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] - Seth Godin reveals his secrets to a successful blog. Hint: Find a tribe. [Seth Godin] - Want more ...

Springpad Online Notebooks Help Get Things Done [WebWorkerDaily]
GigaOM Network — ... Future partnerships with content providers will allow you to pull in branded templates, lists and content from these partner sites. The plan isn’t so much to have Springpad be ad supported but rather to allow you to easily import data from other sites and have it maintain branding and links back to the original content. You can already pull in restaurant reviews from Yelp and make reservations using ...

Yelp Traffic Stats Suggests Broad Local Usage
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... Yelp is often dismissed as a bar and restaurant site for recent college grads in San Francisco. But site usage released by the company suggests that it has rather broad usage, and shouldn’t be so readily pigeon-holed. The site also says it had 15 million uniques in October, up 200 percent from the same period in 2007, and has now gathered four million reviews. ...

Yelp growing leaps and bounds
Lost Remote — ... I’ve been a longtime user of Yelp, the local directory site that has grown market-by-market and often dominates local search terms. ...

Citysearch Does Much-Needed Relaunch; Tries To Strike Balance Between User-Reviews and Editorial
paidContent — Citysearch, the online local online guide which is part of IAC (NSDQ: IACI), is undergoing its first major relaunch in about a decade. Cognizant of tough competition from the likes of Yelp (see Yelp's new usage numbers here) and other strong local sites, it has redone the entire site—adding all kinds of social features and granular local neighborhood level for search (from 140 local city guides to over 75,000 cities and neighborhoods), among other new functionalities. It is also launching a new mobile version, optimized for new handsets like iPhone and others, at ...

Revamped Citysearch brings Facebook to local listings
VentureBeat — ... , is unveiling a test version of its new site today as it tries to stay competitive with up-and-comers like Yelp, as well as the increasing amount of local information available from ...

Citysearch pulls a total overhaul
Webware.com — ... That's a big deal for Citysearch: fast-growing start-up Yelp has started to gain some market share in the "user-generated reviews" department. According to traffic firm Compete.com, Yelp is still smaller but catching up. (Citysearch, for that matter, ...

Citysearch Becomes More Social and Mobile
ReadWriteWeb — Citysearch, the popular local restaurant and shopping guide, announced a new beta version of its service tonight. The new version provides a better local search experience, with the ability to search specific neighborhoods instead of just metropolitan areas. Citysearch also announced a retooled mobile site, which lets users read and write reviews on their mobile devices, and gives them access to menus from participating restaurants. Citysearch has also implemented Facebook Connect, which allows users to log in to the site with their Facebook accounts, and the company plans to roll out ...

Yelp Throws Down On CitySearch
TechCrunch — Local review site Yelp is not going to sit around and let competitor CitySearch have even a day to celebrate their new beta launch. CEO Jeremy Stopellman, noticing our Comscore comparison of the services - “According to comScore, Citysearch brought in 14.6 million unique visitors in the U.S in October, compared to 143 million uniques across its ad network. (Yelp, by the way, did 6 million uniques)” - emailed us with some of their internal traffic numbers and stats. Yelp’s Google Analytics stats for the past ...

Citysearch Learns to Coexist With Search Engines
Bits — ... it easy to sign in, without having to set up an account, Citysearch hopes to encourage more people to write reviews. Citysearch has 4 million registered users, compared to Facebook’s 120 million users (almost all of whom are registered). Also, reviews linked to Facebook accounts may be less likely to be faked by business owners. Citysearch will add similar links to MySpace and OpenSocial next year. User reviews are important to Citysearch, but it has a different approach than Yelp , the local entertainment start-up that has started to catch on in some big cities. Yelp ...

Brownbook global business directory lets you get in on the action
Webware.com — Brownbook, a global business directory that allows users to edit information about companies, launched recently for visitors all over the world. According to the company, Brownbook aims at combining the power of wikis, peer-production, and social networking to change the way business ...

Google Personalizes Search with SearchWiki
Bits — Google is set on Thursday to significantly change the way some people use its search engine. The company is introducing a new feature called SearchWiki that will allow people to modify and save their results for specific Google searches. They can move the sites that appear in rankings up or down, take them out altogether, leave notes next to specific sites and suggest new sites that are not already in the results (or are buried too far down in the results to see). Users must be logged in to Google to use SearchWiki and can revisit their annotations when they perform the same search later. The company is also ...

Digg It... Help us get the Pickens Plan message to President-elect Obama by digging this article. http://tinyurl.com/693a8n
Politweets — ... from web What's hot in your area? Reviews are a great way to find out. Yelp is one of the most popular review sites online. http://www.yelp.com/ ...

Yelp’s European Counterpart Qype Continues Global Expansion
TechCrunch — ... , a Yelp-like site for reviews that has established a strong presence throughout Europe. CEO Stephan Uhrenbacher says that he wasn’t aware of Yelp’s existence when he launched Qype, but at this point it doesn’t really matter - Qype is on fire, and is on its way to becoming the dominant local review site in a number of countries, including England, France, and Germany. ...

MyMedLab: Are You Qualified to Interpret Your Lab Tests?
ReadWriteWeb — ... (online genetics) Abe Lederman, Deep Web Technologies: PatientsLikeMe (patient community) Robert Shelton, Private Access: Sermo (physicians collaboration site) Malcolm Costello, Kryptiq: no one choice, but likes "sites that encourage sites to take personal responsibility for their healthcare" Scott Shreeve, MD: ChangeHealthcare (will become "the Mint.com of healthcare") Sean: Yelp (not health 2.0 per se, but it helped him find a yoga studio while traveling) ...

Where to Go, Who to See? (OWAs)
Mashable! — ... Yelp - a popular business review site that covers just about every topic from eateries to contractor services. Yelp also gives business owners tools to communicate with customers. ...

HOW TO: Find Your Way Around Any New City
Mashable! — ... members share their candid reviews and opinions, which are much more reliable than any hotel website (think Yelp for hotels). However, it helps to have a clear idea of what you’re looking for because the information is so plentiful that it’s easy to lose hours on the detailed reviews. ...

What We Did Last Summer: Social Network Aggregation and Activity Feeds in Windows Live
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... online activity in a single place and then share it with their friends. For example, if you go to my Windows Live profile you’ll see that I’ve aggregated my activities from Twitter, Pandora, StumbleUpon,and my personal weblog onto my Windows Live profile which will then show up on the What’s New page of my friends in Windows Live. Activities can be aggregated from a number of other sites including Flickr, Flixster, PhotoBucket, Yelp, iLike, blogs hosted on Wordpress.com and a bunch of other sites with ...

New wave of updates for Windows Live web services rolling out
Bink.nu — ... album, writing reviews on Yelp , and more. The new home page also provides the latest headlines from MSN and other news and information sources that you can add to this page. ...

Angie’s List swells with $7M for consumer reviews
VentureBeat — ... With free online services like Yelp gaining momentum and trendy cred, Angie’s List — which seems to be targeted at the older crowd — will need to build member loyalty and maybe consider an image update to remain competitive. In the past, it has received funds from ...

Tonight: Live Blog and Video From NY Web 2.0 Meetup
Fast Company - Technology — ... One of the first online and offline networking organizations for professional business women who work in the technology field. The organization focuses on networking, learning about new technologies, and helping members to find jobs. Yelp Yelp is the most comprehensive city guide all created by user recommendations and reviews.

New Health and Wellness Site Targets Women 30+
BIA/Kelsey Blog — Spas and salon advertisers are a huge focus for local sites. They’re a Top 4 selection for Citysearch, and also rank highly for Yelp and other sites.  Now they are being specifically targeted by InnerRewards, a new health and wellness vertical site for women launched by Julie Elaine Brown, a veteran marketer for Johnson & Johnson’s online community sites. While local advertisers are being targeted, however, the content will not be especially local. Nor will articles or sections  be branded under city names, although there are ...

Citysearch Vs. Yelp On The iPhone: Can You Tell Them Apart?
TechCrunch — ... now has an iPhone app. It looks a lot like Yelp’s iPhone app, which came out two months ago looks and is currently the third most popular travel app (after Urbanspoon and Google Earth). Both tap into the iPhone’s GPS to let you find nearby restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, and stores. Both let you rate and review the places you visit. ...

MapQuest Goes into Web 2.0 OverDrive
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... “It is about much more than the business listings piece,” says VP of Product Development Mark Law, a mapping veteran recruited from Yahoo. “We are going to be a one stop shop for all local content” – something that is being syndicated to sites such as Yelp and ...

User Ratings and Reviews: Join the Conversation
SearchEngineWatch Experts — ... and Yelp . Yelp's progression over the past several months makes it an emerging site to keep an eye on and test. Yelp couples a simple local search interface with local content and reviews to help users pick merchants and services based on the experiences of others. Word of mouth has long been one of the ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... week’s news that Christie Hefner was resigning as CEO. But during a presentation at UBS Media Week, EVP Bob Meyers said Playboy is launching a new Web site on inauguration day (Jan. 20) that will feature a city guide for local playboys. (read more…) New Health and Wellness Site Targets Women 30+ Spas and salon advertisers are a huge focus for local sites. They’re a Top 4 selection for Citysearch, and also rank highly on Yelp and other sites. Now they are being specifically targeted by InnerRewards, a new ...

Telonu: Another Place To Write About How Much You Hate Your Job
TechCrunch — ... The site’s layout is reminiscent of Yelp, offering a summary of each company at the top of its profile followed by a listing of brief reviews from workers on the inside. When users sign up they are asked for their full names, but are guaranteed that these will never actually appear on the site (I’d be wary about entering it regardless, as it seems this information could be easily handed over to litigious companies by court order). Whenever users write a post about their company or co-worker, they can choose between displaying their names as ‘Anonymous’ ...

Telonu lets users review jobs — and layoffs
VentureBeat — ... Milpitas, Calif.-based Telonu dubs itself “the Yelp of the workplace.” There’s no shortage of job reviewing sites out there; the most prominent in recent months has been ...

2008: The Year That Was
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... stimulating and thoughtful year for our local media and commerce industry. But speaking for myself, it’s hard to say whether it was a good year, especially with fresh layoffs that we are hearing about every day. In fact, the year was kind of Dickensian  (“best of times, worst of times”). On one hand, there has been an explosion in local content with YouTube, Twitter and Stumble Upon; and omnipresent local reviews with services such as Yelp and Angie’s List. Online video has become a real media, aided by $100 video ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... a very stimulating and thoughtful year for our local media and commerce industry. But speaking for myself, it’s hard to say whether it was a good year, especially with fresh layoffs that we are hearing about every day. In fact, the year was kind of Dickensian  (“best of times, worst of times”). On one hand, there has been an explosion in local content with YouTube, Twitter and Stumble Upon; and omnipresent local reviews with services such as Yelp and Angie’s List. Online video has become a real media, aided by $100 video ...

Why a Single Yelp User Could Bring Consumer Review Sites to Their Knees
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim — As consumer review sites continue to gain popularity, they appear destined to play a continued role in the public perception of any businesses’ online reputation. That is, unless the consumers screw it up for themselves. You see, over the past few months I’ve noticed a growing trend of consumers making vague, petty, or downright defamatory complaints. Apparently, I’m not seeing things as CNET reports that a Yelp user is being sued by a chiropractor who claims his review is defamatory. The lawsuit, ...

Yelp Review Leads to Defamation Suit
WebProNews Feed — ... at CNET, says lawsuits like this stemming from reviews on their site are uncommon, shouldn't have to worry much about it if their terms of service page is any indication. In one section it reads: Responsibility for Your Content. a. You are solely responsible for Your Content. You assume all risks associated with use of Your Content, including any reliance on its accuracy, completeness or usefulness by others, or any disclosure by you of information in Your Content that makes you personally identifiable. You hereby affirm, represent, and warrant that you own, or ...

Windows Live Tip: How to Add your Flickr Photos to your Windows Live Profile
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... pushing the "Add" button you should end up back on your profile with your Flickr information now visible on it. A.) People in your network can now see your Flickr updates in various Windows Live applications including Windows Live Messenger as shown below   PS: The same basic set of steps work for adding activities from Twitter, Pandora, StumbleUpon, Flixster, PhotoBucket, Yelp, iLike, blogs hosted on Wordpress.com, or from any RSS/Atom feed to your Windows ...

Yelp Now Available In The UK [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... I’m a frequent flier to England and a longtime fan of Yelp, the gloriously verbose and opinionated user-generated review site, so this is doubly good news: ...

Yelp Jumps the Pond
Bits — Yelp , the popular restaurant, entertainment and services review site where people can rate and write about anything with an address, from Chinese restaurants to churches, is jumping the pond. As of Thursday, Brits can review their favorite London pub or curry house at Yelp.co.uk . Yelp, which started in San Francisco in July 2004 and has expanded to 24 cities in the United States, also opened a Canada site in August. “We’ve had our eye on the U.K. for quite a long time — it’s such a natural market relative to the U.S.,” said Geoff Donaker, Yelp’s chief ...

Yelp Crosses the Pond and Launches in the UK
CenterNetworks — Reviews site Yelp has announced the launch of a local site for UK residents today. The company notes that over 100,000 visitors from the UK visit Yelp monthly. It will be interesting to see what type of community builds around the UK Yelp and see how it compares to the USA or Canadian versions. I am an infrequent Yelp'er -- I write a bunch of reviews but I wouldn't consider myself part of the Yelp community. Jemima Kiss of the Guardian has a good review of the Yelp UK launch. The comments on her post suggest that Yelp might have some work to do to win over the UK reviews ...

Yelp jumps across the pond
The Social — ... User-generated business reviews site Yelp has officially launched a U.K. edition, meaning that no business in England, Scotland, or Wales is safe any longer from the wrath of notoriously opinionated "Yelpers." Yelp had already gained a following in the U.K., the company said, because travelers bound for the ...

Yelp jumps across the pond
Webware.com — ... User-generated business reviews site Yelp has officially launched a U.K. edition, meaning that no business in England, Scotland, or Wales is safe any longer from the wrath of notoriously opinionated "Yelpers." Yelp had already gained a following in the U.K., the company said, because travelers bound for the U.S. would use it to look up hotels, restaurants, bars, and the like. More than 100,000 of its visitors in the past month came from the U.K. The San Francisco-based Yelp, which accepts reviews of any business in the U.S. but also clusters businesses ...

Review site RateItAll gets more social
VentureBeat — ... Co-founder Lawrence Coburn says he’s convinced that compared to more focused review site like Yelp, “radically horizontal will win over time.” I’m not sure the San Francisco company will ever overtake Yelp, but that doesn’t mean it won’t find a healthy audience — in fact, it already has, with 1.3 million visits in December, up 44 percent from June. ...

What Social Media Is and What Social Media Is Not
louisgray.com — By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed) This post touches upon what I feel social media is and isn’t. It does not matter what your purpose is for using social media. The key elements are and always will be the same. Your desired outcome is dictated by the basic fundamentals of the core of what social media is. This post touches upon the most important ones. I could have went on and on with this list, but I don't think that was needed to drive home what I'm trying to get across. Please feel free to add to it by leaving your ...

Sell Google Apps through Google’s reseller program
VentureBeat — ... and Yelp, with 3,000 signing up every day. It doesn’t provide a breakdown of how many customers use the free version  and the premium version, which you have to pay for. The latter camp is about to grow, since Google will now require any business with more 50 users to use the pay version. ...

Holovaty’s EveryBlock Prepares “For Profit” Strategy
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... But even with all this, Holovaty says his site remains “totally unique.” None of the others are entirely news-oriented, he emphasizes. That’s what keeps people coming back, not directories.  Moreover, EveryBlock aggregates an incredible amount of news data, while the others typically have “just one thing. You can’t build a sustainable level of interest that way.”  Yelp isn’t going to be competition, and neither is ...

OpenTable and Medidata Hope to End I.P.O. Drought
Bits — ... restaurant lists, based on user reviews, to compete with Web 2.0 sites such as Yelp . In the nine months ending Sept. 30, OpenTable lost $149,000 on $41.3 million in revenue, up from a $191,000 loss on $29.4 million in revenue in the same period the year before, according to the registration statement it filed with the S.E.C. It charges restaurants $1 per seated customer and also makes money from charging restaurants a subscription fee for its software. OpenTable has signed on 10,000 restaurants as customers, one-third the number that take reservations in North America, the ...

Driving Stinks! Get Help From Wireless Internet
Internet Evolution: — ... of vehicular Internet because it can deliver so much of what people want: radio, TV, email, information, etc. Cooley sees traffic data as a killer service, although he notes there aren't great traffic platforms or standards for wireless traffic information. He'd like more integration of traffic information with searching and content databases. For example, Cooley would like to search for Chinese restaurants and receive recommendations from his preferred social network(s), such as Yelp , plus traffic directions. ...

Goodrec Launches Its Mobile-Friendly Online Review Site To The Public
TechCrunch — ... CEO Mihir Shah says that since TechCrunch50, the site has compiled over 100,000 recommendation from its beta testers, the majority of which were submitted through the site’s iPhone application. Shah says that because of the brevity of its reviews, Goodrec is better suited for mobile reviewing than competitors like Yelp, which doesn’t allow users to submit reviews from its iPhone app (likely because the site prefers longer reviews). Aside from the main standalone application, Goodrec is also offering free apps that focus on each category the site covers (the first ...

"Twitter of reviews," Goodrec, now open to all
Webware.com — ... of user reviews -- it limits commentary to a simple thumbs-up, "mixed bag," or thumbs-down rating, plus 160 characters of review text. The iPhone app for the service is location-aware, helping you find restaurants or bars near where you are. Unlike on the obvious competitor Yelp, you can write reviews from the mobile app. ...

Diddit: A Social To-Do List For Your Life
TechCrunch — ... Diddit shares many features in common with a number of other sites (for example, Yelp offers a huge library of user reviews and lists, as does ...

Diddit makes your 'bucket list' social
Webware.com — Diddit is a new site for making lists. These lists are not the kind you make for the grocery store or things you need to do at work. Instead it's places you've been, toys you had as a kid (or adult), and anything else that could be chronicled. Some might find this useless, but it's ...

Diddit launches surprisingly addictive activity guide
VentureBeat — The development team behind search company Inktomi is launching a new service tonight called Diddit, which functions as both an activity guide and a way to share stories and accomplishments. Diddit is a bit like business-rating services such as Yelp and Citysearch, but with a broader range of listings, and a dash of “story-sharing” sites like Tokoni. It includes individual attraction descriptions, as well as lists of everything from Harry Potter books to free activities in San Francisco. You can ...

'Apprentice' runner-up launches mapping site in LA
L.A. Times Tech Blog — ... ... a "back-end system" to get all the bars, restaurants and entertainment venues in a particular city onto one map. Eventually, online publishers will license the technology and put the map on their websites, he says. Advertisers will be able to buy addresses and put their brands there. And Web surfers can see all the entertainment in a neighborhood with one click, rather than the several it might take on a site such as Yelp. ...

New Google Maps tweak gives you more results
Webware.com — On Tuesday Google Maps got a small tweak that's been long overdue. Now, instead of just showing you the top ten results of a local search on the map, it shows all of them. It still places the little map markers that match up with the top ten results, but now you can see other ...

Yelp's not helpless against accusations of extortion
TechBlog — ... February 19, 2009 Yelp's not helpless against accusations of extortion Yelp , the popular Web site that makes it easy for people to review businesses, has been accused by a newspaper in the San Francisco Bay area of telling potential business owners that negative reviews could be removed if they advertised. ...

Yelp will help you remove bad reviews…for a price.
The Next Web — John, a restaurateur in the San Francisco, was listed on online directory Yelp.com like many other businesses. He had a few hundred visitors from Yelp,  his fair share of reviews but as a sales person from Yelp would point out on a regular basis “..You have a few bad ones (reviews) at the top. I could do something about those.” When John asked exactly what could be done, Mike the salesman response was: “We can move them. Well, for $299 a month.” Mike cleverly also considered the fact that many of ...

The East Bay Express Accuses Yelp.com of Extortion
AppScout — You've probably heard of Yelp.com, the user-generated recommendation site that's been gaining a lot of traction recently. A friend who's the publisher of a legacy print "alternative entertainment" weekly says Yelp has hurt his bottom line every bit as much as Craigslist has. That says a lot about Yelp and its strength to drive customers into well reviewed businesses. Founded by former PayPal engineers, the service describes itself like this: Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great (and not so great) in your world. You already ...

3 Keys To Success For Local Search SEO
Search Engine Journal — ... to the html code, it can also help to bracket your business address with the [address] [/address] tag. Each citation that you get around the web on reputable websites counts in favor of your legitimate membership in that geo-location. The sites with the most citations associated with a location are going to be considered to be the most important web sites for that location. Places to get citations include: Google’s Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, Yelp, SuperPages and infoUSA. Conclusion To dominate local search I ...

Yelp's CEO: No, we're not the Mafia
Webware.com — ... Yelp nevertheless welcomes feedback, Stoppelman said. It's possible, for example, to review Yelp on Yelp. Over 1500 people have reviewed it, and he said he tries to respond to as many of them as possible. ...

Yelp's CEO: No, we're not the Mafia
The Social — ... NEW YORK--"They have that saying, 'don't shoot the messenger,' but the reason they say that is because the messenger gets shot," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, visiting from the company's home base of San Francisco, told me over coffee on Tuesday morning. "So I have to take my ... ...

Getting Social and Local in Europe: A Conversation With Qype
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... , a social/local search site whose popularity in Europe has matched that of Yelp in some U.S. markets. Our first order of business was to finally get confirmation on the sites proper pronunciation: the argument was settled - there is a silent U (pronounced “Kwipe”). ...

I’ve Seen The Future Of Mashups, And Its Name Is PizzaShare
TechCrunch — What could be yummier than a mashup using the Google Maps API to crowdsource and pinpoint the best pizza places in America? Thanks to PizzaShare, you’ll hopefully never have to wonder where to get them slices because you can just enter the city or zip code and go for the one that has the biggest circle. It’s as easy as pie (you knew that was coming, right?). Seriously though, there are plenty of services on the web and on mobile devices that you could use to find a decent pizza place if you’re ever somewhere where neither you or anyone you know can tell you which ...

88 Outstanding Favicons and 6 Resources to Help You Create Your Own
SitePoint — ... Wine.com Digg MailChimp San Diego Zoo Yelp Digileon ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... , a local business review site whose popularity in Europe has matched that of Yelp in some U.S. markets. Our first order of business was to finally get confirmation on the site’s proper pronunciation. The argument was settled: There is a silent U (pronounced “Kwipe”). ...

‘Dividing 11 Points, What is Your Preference for Print vs. IYP?’
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... was asked the last time I used each directory, and for what reason (in my case, restaurant coupons a few weeks ago). Then I was asked about my usage of some Internet directories, some of which are mainstream, including all the online versions of the big YPs, Google and Yahoo. Some, however, were just barely alive or inactive in my area, leaving me to scratch my head why they were included. Interestingly, the survey didn’t ask me about sites where I also get listings from: Yelp, Angie’s List, Mojopages, InsiderPages, CitySearch, ...

Yelp Has PR Problem Re: Reviews and Practices
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... Five-year-old Yelp has been something of a phenomenon, and is a preferred ratings and review directory for millions of people online and mobile in 24 cities.  In December, ...

Trusted Places Gets a Revamp. Clean is the Word.
The Next Web — Online business directory and review community Trusted Places has relaunched and on first impressions, it’s a notable step in the right direction. The entire site’s UI has been refreshed aiming for a much more simple and clean interface, leaving a much slicker and more welcoming impression. Functionality wise, the site has incorporated a number of significant new features. Users can now write reviews from anywhere on the site and Trusted Places will automatically attempt to match the review to the relevant location. As well as Facebook Connect integration, Twitter ...

Doctors try to stifle online patient reviews
Technically Incorrect — ... sites or blogs. (2000 doctors are already using these agreements) There are many, many words on the Medical Justice site. And I tried to pay attention to them all. So if this review doesn't encompass all of the site's nuances, then I hope no one believes I have any malicious intentions to the profession that has saved me from many a peculiar affliction. In essence, Medical Justice thinks there's a lot of utter twaddle written about doctors on review sites such as Yelp or RateMDs.com. Some of it is malicious. Some may possibly be written by scorned ...

Webware Radar: The Washington Post teams up with Simply Hired
Webware.com — The Washington Post and job search engine, Simply Hired, announced Friday that they have inked a deal that will allow Washingtonpost.com users to access Simply Hired's database of listings on the publication's site. According to the companies, Simply Hired's listings will be placed ...

Rating Doctors Online: It's About Time
Tech Observer — ... before getting treated. The contract says the patient can't post comments or ratings on public Web sites. Which is crazy. A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 80 percent of adults who go online look for health information -- and about 30 percent look for information about a specific doctor or hospital. Sites like RateMDs.com are growing in popularity, along with the overall trend that has people turning to TripAdvisor, Yelp, RateMyProfessors.com, and other sites for ratings. Doctors, who use ...

Restaurant to Yelp Reviewers: Bring It On
Bits — A San Francisco restaurant has figured out a way to wrest power from Yelp , the review site that has many small business owners feeling frustrated and voiceless. Pizzeria Delfina, a Mission District institution, is flaunting Yelp reviewers’ mean-spirited, one-star reviews with pride. The restaurant made T-shirts quoting bad reviews and gave them to employees to wear on the job. Now, when customers order a margherita pizza with fior di latte mozzarella, tomato and basil, their server might bring it to them wearing a t-shirt that reads: “The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming ...

Yelp faces additional allegations
The Inquisitr » Technology — ... Yelp, which bills itself as a Web 2.0 review site powered by real people giving real reviews, recently faced charges by San Francisco businesses that Yelp employees were strong arming them for better review placement in exchanges for goods and sponsorship deals. It would seem according to a story today at the Chicago Tribune that the practice isn’t just restricted to San Francisco. Apparently some Chicago businesses are accusing Yelp representatives of approaching them to re-arrange the company’s positive and negative reviews in exchange for those same type of ...

Yahoo’s SearchMonkey results get awesomer with embedded content
VentureBeat — ... . And it makes sense as a next step, given SearchMonkey’s general mission to provide search results that are more useful than just a few lines of text. In the past, that has included improvements like review summaries from Yelp and basic data from someone’s profile on business networking site ...

WeedMaps Wants To Be A Yelp For Cannabis Clubs
TechCrunch — ... One of the issues that will face WeedMaps is that Yelp apparently already does offer reviews of these Cannabis Clubs (in fact, it has an entire category dedicated to the topic, which you can find here). That said, users may well be interested in getting their reviews from a more specialized site, and employing the aforementioned membership deal could ...

Let’s Get High: WeedMaps Wants To Be A Yelp For Cannabis Clubs
TechCrunch — ... One of the issues that will face WeedMaps is that Yelp apparently already does offer reviews of these Cannabis Clubs (in fact, it has an entire category dedicated to the topic, which you can find here). That said, users may well be interested in getting their reviews from a more specialized site, and employing the aforementioned membership deal could ...

How To Make Your Business Look Good Online
bMighty.com - Features — ... . If customers have an issue, and you help them get the answer by way of your blog, you may turn that issue into something positive and stop them from posting negative comments elsewhere. Employ social search engines. Claim and enhance your business listings on search engines such as Yelp , ...

Blellow: Like Yelp meets LinkedIn Meets Twitter In A Way That Makes Sense
TechCrunch — ... Blellow is a fascinating collaboration tool a la Yelp but Blellow allows you to create groups based on projects - Wordpress Devs can group with other Wordpress Devs while freelance writers can kvetch with other writers, for example. ...

Blellow: Like Yammer meets LinkedIn Meets Twitter In A Way That Makes Sense
TechCrunch — ... allowing potential employers to find the local experts in particular topics. You can join groups of like-minded individual, create private groups, and ask questions of your friends. You can also post jobs and paid projects for $24, which is where Blellow expects to make their cash. They’re also offering 10GB of storage space for $10 a month and the system accepts files of any size - up to your paid limit - to share with your peers. Just as Yelp is Twitter for business, Blellow seems to be Twitter for freelancers. But do we ...

How Do I Import Google Reader, Delicious, and Other Services Into Facebook?
Stay N' Alive — With the new Facebook home page design, the visibility of all my updates is making other people aware that I import my Google Reader, Delicious, and other activity into Facebook. It is one of my most frequent questions asked in the messages I get on Facebook. For this reason I thought I’d share how I do it. Believe it or not, no app install is required for this - it’s built right into Facebook. Services Available First of all, the services you can import into your Facebook wall feed: Yelp Photobucket ...

A More Local, Social Citysearch
Bits — ... ), while others, like Yelp , have become strong competitors to Citysearch. Citysearch has been testing the new site with 1 percent of its customers since November, when ...

New Gmail labs options turns Yelp, Flickr, YouTube links into attachments
Webware.com — Gmail has four new items in its labs section, all of which enhance the links people have included in their messages. You're now able to flip on support for Yelp, Flickr, Picasa Web albums, and YouTube. Doing so will turn a link from one of those sites into a full ...

Google Labs Brings Photo and Video Previews to Gmail
ReadWriteWeb — ... and Yelp. The new Labs features all work the way you would expect them to, activating when a link to one of these services is detected and appending the message with a small gallery. ...

Know your neighborhood: 13 sites
Webware.com — Whether you're moving to a new place or you just want to be more familiar with your surroundings, there are a variety of sites on the Web that fill you in on everything from restaurants to businesses to apartments in your area. And if you want to get to know them a little better, we have you covered. Find some businesses BooRah If you're only looking for restaurants, BooRah is for you. The site features information on how to get to a restaurant, but really shines when you read through the informative reviews from users and consider the "similar ...

HOW TO: Use Social Media for Travel Research
Mashable! — Whether you’re traveling to another city, state, or continent, putting in a few hours to do your homework can mean the difference between a great vacation and a week full of headaches. Finding great local restaurants, comfortable sleeping accomodations, and hidden gems should be on the top of your travel list, no matter if it’s a one day business trip or a permanent move to Thailand. In the past, this type of information was exclusive to travel agents and generic travel books. However, with the rise of social media and stronger interconnectivity, you can get the real story, avoid the ...

Leveraging Small Business Customer Reviews and Testimonials Online
Search Engine Journal — ... saying about your business. Citysearch.com, especially important for restaurants and entertainment. Google Maps InsiderPages.com Judy’s Book Kaboodle Live Maps Local2Me.com MerchantCircle.com MojoPages.com Superpages.com Yahoo Local YellowBot.com YellowPages.com Yelp.com In addition, there are many industry specific consumer ...

Yelp - Sharing Your Opinions with Others
Technology - Channel Feed — Today we decided to have a little Thai food today for lunch from our favorite Thai restaurant in the area, Thai Papaya. I couldn’t remember their website address because they used to be named Thai House, but relocated and are now Thai Papaya, so I did a quick search. The results came back with a restaurant review of the location on the Yelp.com website. ...

Facebook is lucky it missed buying Twitter and now should eat Yelp
Scobleizer — ... there. “That’s bribery.” Yeah, yeah, but this stuff goes on every day in business. You think those celebrities on TV that sponsor Nike are doing it for free? No. So why shouldn’t businesses try to pay for you to like them? Think this doesn’t matter? Ask Christina Tan. She’s Milan (our son)’s new doctor. I took a picture of her and wrote about her here. How did Maryam (my wife) find Christina? Yelp. See, on Yelp, Christina is the top rated pediatrician in San Mateo. “Scoble, ...

New site lets you rate your friends, enemies—but why?
Ars Technica — A website that purports to be the "Yelp about people" will officially launch next week, but it's already accessible. PersonRatings.com hopes to act as a central location for people to find information about managers, coworkers, friends, neighbors, and, well, pretty much anyone. But, like most new sites that depend on an audience, its success will largely depend on whether anyone actually chooses to use it. A quick view of the site's eye-bleeding visuals reveals a million or so profiles already set up for your rating pleasure, ...

MySpace goes after Yelp with Citysearch partnership
Webware.com — ... to major U.S. cities) that are souped up with social features like the ones that you might see on a band or celebrity's MySpace page (photos, videos, comments, and the like). It's launching with just "restaurants," "bars," and "nightlife" categories, but will eventually expand--and it'll only be available to a select number of users this week before rolling out to the rest of MySpace's U.S. users. This move will put MySpace in competition with fast-growing reviews site Yelp, which has been dealing with image and credibility issues recently but which has ...

MySpace Goes Local: Announces Partnership with Citysearch
ReadWriteWeb — MySpace today announced a partnership with Citysearch that will bring Citysearch's database of local businesses to the social network's new MySpace Local service. Users on MySpace can now review, rate, and share content about businesses on MySpace Local, and reviews and ratings will appear in users' activity stream. MySpace will launch this service with support for restaurants and bars first, though it plans to include a wider range of businesses in the near future. MySpace Local will be available as a private beta today, and should become available to all users in the next few weeks. ...

MySpace Partners With Citysearch for "MySpace Local"
Fast Company - Technology — In a Web event this morning, MySpace announced a new service called MySpace Local in partnership with Citysearch that will debut in open beta next month. Using the latter's database of 75,000 local businesses, MySpace has created what it's calling a "social community" to allow users and local businesses to connect to one another. Here's how it'll work: small businesses can now have pages on MySpace, that in turn connect to "hubs" based on localities. MySpace users can connect to the city hub nearest them, share ratings and recommendations with other friends, ...

Today's Internet Trend: Local Ratings and Reviews
Bits — In separate announcements on Tuesday, MySpace , the social network, and OpenTable , the reservations site, said they would soon begin allowing their users to rate and review restaurants and share those recommendations with friends. First up: MySpace, a division of News Corp., is partnering with CitySearch, a division of IAC, to create pages on MySpace for small businesses like restaurants, bars and nightclubs. When users visit the new service, dubbed MySpace Local, and review the establishments, their activity will also appear on the MySpace pages of their friends. MySpace is launching separate ...

'MySpace Local' Helps Support Local Music
WebProNews Feed — It's been said that all politics is local and perhaps the same could be said for music. Not only do many fans love to support local music, but they want to know the best places to see it.  Bands too, want to know which are the best places to perform. But like a voter choosing between candidates, which ...

UpNext for iPhone Coming
Ubergizmo — ... for Apple's mobile platform. From what they told us, the 3D graphics on the iPhone emulator were "impressive". If you're not familiar with UpNext, it's a local search service that has a 3D interface from which you can do many things, among them, send a pointer to a place, via Twitter. Think of it as a Yelp, in 3D. ...

Yelp Focuses On Mobile, New And Improved iPhone App Coming Soon
TechCrunch — ... Local review sites like Yelp have irrevocably changed the way consumers find businesses in a particular area, and truly given power to the consumer in finding the best place to eat a meal, grab a drink, etc. And the potential of putting local reviews and listings on mobile devices is immense. Yelp’s existing iPhone app is less than a year old and it already accounts for 5% of Yelp’s overall traffic, which adds up to be around roughly 1 million monthly visitors. ...

Yelp to release new iPhone app
Webware.com — ... A full five percent of reviews site Yelp's traffic comes from its downloadable iPhone app, the company said Thursday. In response, it's revamping ...

Yelp to release new iPhone app
The Social — ... A full five percent of reviews site Yelp's traffic comes from its downloadable iPhone app, the company said Thursday. In response, it's revamping ...

How Social Media Is Taking Your Company Hostage
Silicon Alley Insider — ... An apparently false -- but interesting -- example is the recent Yelp scandal, where the dining/shopping reviews site allegedly swapped advertising deals with brands for the right to remove bad user reviews from their profiles. My sources say this incident is bunk, but if they could get away with it, they should be doing exactly that. (Or someone else certainly will.) ...

Article: iPhone Gems: Thirteen Apps For Foodies & Drinkers
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond — ... (Free) by Yelp , is reviewed today for the first time. Both Urbanspoon and Yelp are web sites that offer users access to growing databases of restaurants inside and outside of the United States, aggregating details about the restaurants and user reviews on easy-to-read entry pages. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer also runs a restaurant review web site that participates (without compensation) in Urbanspoon but not Yelp—though it would be preferable to participate in both, only Urbanspoon offers web links to full off-site reviews, one of a number of features ...

Article: iPhone Gems: Fourteen Apps For Foodies & Drinkers
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond — ... (Free) by Yelp , is reviewed today for the first time. Both Urbanspoon and Yelp are web sites that offer users access to growing databases of restaurants inside and outside of the United States, aggregating details about the restaurants and user reviews on easy-to-read entry pages. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer also runs a restaurant review web site that participates (without compensation) in Urbanspoon but not Yelp—though it would be preferable to participate in both, only Urbanspoon offers web links to full off-site reviews, one of a number of features ...

News: App Mix: Yelp Update, 2-Page Browsers, Postcard Mailers
iLounge | All Things iPod, iPhone, iTunes and beyond — image Yelp has announced an upcoming update to its same-named iPhone application, reviewed yesterday , which currently offers restaurant reviews and a restaurant finder feature. According to a company spokesman, the new Yelp version will let iPhone users “write Twitter-length ‘quick tips’ about a business, draft full reviews, browse a Facebook-style feed of reviews, tips, photos and events” either nearby or authored by friends, as well as adding U.K. support, a large photo browser, and account creation directly from the iPhone. A video of the new Yelp version, which ...

Yelp to allow businesses to publicly respond to user reviews
Webware.com — ... In an e-mail sent out to the service's "Elite" users Yelp's community manager Don Bourassa said that the service is being set up to give business owners a way to provide constructive feedback in a public forum, as the current system requires businesses to correspond with users through private messages. ...

Yelp Gives Small Businesses a Louder Voice
Bits — Small businesses will soon feel a little more love in their love-hate relationship with Yelp , the review site. Yelp will begin allowing small business owners to respond publicly to reviews they think are incorrect. This is a big change for the review site, which has a complex relationship with small businesses. The business owners like having a forum to get customer comments and, when the reviews are good, free advertising. On the other hand, Yelp ...

Yelp lets businesses set the record straight with owner comments
VentureBeat — ... Yelp is trying to make business owners a little less cranky about getting dissed on the popular review site by allowing them to respond publicly to reviews they believe are inaccurate. ...

Yelp To Let Businesses Talk Back
ReadWriteWeb — ... against the site. In fact, Yelp has established a Myths page to dispel some of these misconceptions. However, the truth remains that Yelp is a very powerful guide for tourists and locals alike to find great restaurants and business wherever they might be. And soon, businesses might be able to have a public voice on the site for the first time. ...

Yelp to welcome comments from business owners on reviews
Ars Technica — ... Business owners who have something to say about their Yelp reviews will soon have a voice on the site for the first time. As of next week, small businesses will be able to publicly respond on Yelp to the reviews left by customers, similar to an eBay seller posting a response to feedback left by a buyer. The move should help placate those who have been angsty about Yelp for some time while still allowing users to write openly about their experiences. ...

Yelp relents, allows business owners to respond online
Yahoo! Tech Advisors — ... between businesses and customers who complained about them publicly, so hopefully a more open, two-way communication system will make both sides a bit less litigious. What could go wrong? I'm happy to see that businesses will have some say on their pages, but the move does run the risk of making the site become a "he said/she said" morass. "The duck was too cold," one user complains. "No it wasn't," says the restaurant. Yelp is already cautioning against the over-use of public comments , noting that "sometimes it's to your advantage not to comment at ...

The NYT Covers Hyperlocal: It isn’t Always About Journalism
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... Do the interests of local businesses fit in here somewhere?  Perhaps a little, especially on the elusive “sustainability” front.  But it has never really been a focus. Surely, we need something that serves as a middle ground between the bar hopping in Yelp, the plumber reviews in ...

Yelp’s New And Improved iPhone App Officially Hits The App Store
TechCrunch — ... Yelp’s version 2.0 of its iPhone app has officially hit Apple’s App store. We reported on Yelp’s focus on the mobile space and its importance ...

Intuit SMB Services Buys BooRah, Will Add Reviews
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... and added smart phone access as well. The site has been serving 35 metro areas, including 14 that have been recently launched. It can be said that BooRah pioneered semantic evaluations of whether reviews are positive or negative, and then counting up “votes.” But the semantic review field has become a crowded one recently, with such entrants as Marchex’s OpenList and UrbanSpoon. All of them compete against mass sites such as Citysearch and Yelp. (Thanks to Screenwerk for pointing out the BooRah announcement).

The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left?
Scobleizer — ... page news to blogs like Huffington Post. Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook. Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter. Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month). Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp. Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps. Free meal #9. ...

Coming Next Week: New Web Activities And Contact Importing From MySpace, Hi5 And Tagged
LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews — ... and Fotolog to your profile. Every time you do something on those sites it will turn up on your profile, and of course in your friend’s “What’s New” feed. These new additions bring the grand total of third-party content partners to more than 30! Feed Partners: Daum, flickr, Flixter, iLike, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, WordPress, Yelp New feed partners: Live Journal, ...

Listen up, MySpace: Here's how to get back on top
Webware.com — ... are part of that, but it can go even further. When I was growing up in the '90s, kids much cooler than myself would show up in Times Square to catch a glimpse of MTV's "Total Request Live" taping or to the "Beach House" that was set up in a different seaside town each summer. More recently, we've seen the success of Yelp parties: Rent a venue, invite avid users, and just let them hang out. They'll stick around online, too. ...

Yelp Finally Allows Businesses to Respond to Reviews
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim — ... Now, before you rub your hands together in delight, Yelp’s well aware of just how over-bearing business owners can be, so it’s going to be very strict in what it will and won’t allow business owners to post. Here are the guidelines for business owners planning to respond: ...

An experiment in using tech abroad
VentureBeat — ... on the fly, since the iPhone has location awareness.  Among the services that are useful on the run are Yelp (for nearby restaurant reviews), ...

Yelp Closes Traffic Gap With Citysearch
paidContent — ... came with everything from Facebook Connect compatibility to a new Smartphone-friendly mobile site. But users aren't exactly gobbling them up. In just a year, local review site Yelp has grown to attract nearly the same size audience as its larger, better-funded rival—and the latest stats ...

Lunch.com Opens Up, Connecting Similar People Through Reviews
louisgray.com — ... , which emerged from beta this evening. Based on information you provide the network, Lunch.com connects users with similar interests, hoping you can find good content through peers - focusing primarily on rich reviews and a collection of facts, essentially taking the best of Yelp.com and ...

YPA 09: National Advertisers Remain Loyal to Yellow Pages
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... panel moderated by the Kelsey Group’s Charles Laughlin reiterated the importance of Yellow Pages to their businesses. While they were open-minded about experimenting with new types of directional advertising, including Yelp, Internet Yellow Pages and search, print clearly remains their core effort. ...

13 BlackBerry apps for the social networker
Webware.com — Though the iPhone gets much of the attention when it comes to mobile apps, RIM recently launched its BlackBerry App World to compete with Apple. I've been using apps from that store (and a few other Twitter clients that can be downloaded online) that bring social networking to the social networker. Some are better than others, but they're all worth trying at least once. And they're all free! 13 social network apps Facebook The BlackBerry's Facebook app is the best social networking app in the App World. It lets you update your status from your phone, ...

Public Relations For Startups
CenterNetworks — ... , as well as Chantelle Karl from Yelp! held up the PR side of the equation and did us all proud. Gillian Reagan of the ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... panel moderated by The Kelsey Group’s Charles Laughlin reiterated the importance of Yellow Pages to their businesses. While they were open-minded about experimenting with new types of directional advertising, including Yelp, Internet Yellow Pages and search, print clearly remains their core effort. ...

Ex-Googlers Try To Create A Better Travel Guide With Nextstop
TechCrunch — ... and categorize it as a place to eat/drink, stay/sleep, or do/explore along with an approximate price range (free, inexpensive, mid-range, high-end). Then the recommendation is created and other people can find it on the site. I did this for a restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, Bar Tabac, and it found it immediately, along with a great picture. There is plenty of competition for online travel guides and social recommendations, starting with TripAdvisor and Yelp down to a bevy of startups including Dopplr, Offbeat Guides and ...

Google Revs Up Some New Search Features
Bits — ... (recent results, past 24 hours, past week, past year) or a combination of these and other characteristics. As the user clicks on each refinement, the search results update automatically. Search Options is being rolled out to users on Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, Google will begin showing enhanced versions of snippets — the short segments of text that appear just below search links — on some results. If a search result for a restaurant, for example, is a page of reviews from the site Yelp , Google may show not just the link, but also more details about the reviews — that the ...

Small Businesses Talk About Social Networking and Social "Not Working"
bMighty.com - Features — ... makes it possible to hire contractors, and even full-time employees, who work in remote locations. That can often save big money compared to local workers, and put you in position to hire the person you really want rather than the person who happens to be close by. E-mail marketing was perhaps the most popular online marketing method. Patty Styka, whose Elegant Lagoon Cruises runs an electric-boat charter service in Foster City, said she regularly posts announcements on Yelp and Smalltown , while Lulu Lopez , relies on e-mail marketing to promote her ...

Is This The Future of the iPhone? Push, Background, Bundles
ReadWriteWeb — Version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system is in beta testing among developers and if all the actual and rumored changes come to fruition, the iPhone user experience is likely to be very different soon. In this post we'll take a brief look at three of the biggest changes being talked about: push notifications, background apps and bundled software. Some of these changes are much more likely than others. We've also got a few fantasies about what we wish was coming soon to the iPhone. Sponsor Push Notification System Know how your iPhone ...

OpenTable Finds Strong Demand for Shares in Offering
Bits — ... user reviews and a mobile application to compete with review sites like Yelp . Unlike many Web companies, it does not rely on advertising for revenue. Instead, it charges restaurants a monthly subscription fee for the software and $1 per diner seated. OpenTable’s unique business model and its potential for growth make it an attractive investment, Ms. Killian said. The company has 10,000 restaurants in its network and seats 3 million diners a month, but estimates that there are 30,000 restaurants taking reservations in North America and 600 million diners, according to its ...

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online
Wired Top Stories — ... share. The number of personal photos posted on Facebook and MySpace is astronomical, but it's a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of photos taken with a digital camera are shared in some fashion. Then there are status updates, map locations, half-thoughts posted online. Add to this the 6 billion videos served by YouTube each month in the US alone and the millions of fan-created stories deposited on fanfic sites. The list of sharing organizations is almost endless: Yelp for reviews, Loopt for locations, Delicious for bookmarks. Sharing ...

Look At It This Way, Yelp. At Least You Didn’t Delete All Your User Accounts
TechCrunch — ... Yelp managed to pair a normally non-offensive headline in a newsletter article about biking (“Put the Fun Between Your Legs”) with a noble sponsor (SF Women Against Rape) to ...

YPG Launches ‘Answers’ Using Praized Platform
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... , a new  Yelp-like service that relies on the wisdom of the community to ask questions, and provide recommendations and information about local services. All the information is  portable to ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... , a new Yelp-like service that relies on the wisdom of the community to ask questions, and provide recommendations and information about local services. All the information is portable to ...

Nextstop Wants To Be Yelp For Travelers [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... is aiming to be a sort of Yelp for travelers, drawing on a community of users who recommend things to do around the world and in their own hometowns. Founded by ...

For Brevity's Sake: NextStop, Twitter for Activities Launches
ReadWriteWeb — Created by former Google employees Carl Sjorgreen and Adrian Graham, privately funded San Francisco-based Nextstop launched this morning to help thrill seekers, tourists and foodies find the concise recommendations they need to plan their daily excursions. At first glance, Nextstop may appear like an amalgamation of crowd-sourced review site Yelp, Yahoo's event site Upcoming and travel listing site Dopplr; however, the site has two major differences - recommendations are positive and can only contain a maximum of 160 characters. ...

NextStop takes on local reviews in 160 characters
Webware.com — New reviews site NextStop made its public debut on Monday after a successful private beta. The site lets anyone write a quick 160-character take on local attractions from around the world. In comparison to other mainstream reviews services like CitySearch and Yelp, this ...

Your online guide to moving
Webware.com — ... Yelp Yelp is a fine tool for finding company reviews. And its moving reviews are outstanding. Once you pick the city you want to search in, finding mover reviews takes just seconds. I searched for movers in San Francisco and found 273 results. The reviews were thoughtful and more informative than any other mover review site in this roundup. You might have trouble finding mover reviews in smaller towns, but Yelp has more reviews than any site I tested, so it should definitely be your first stop when you start researching movers. ...

LikeMe Brings Social Recommendations to Pre, but Can You Trust their Reviews?
ReadWriteWeb — ... , a social recommendation site similar to Yelp.com lets users rate and review local businesses, attractions, restaurants, and clubs. After you join the service, you can upload info about yourself, your favorite places, and your favorite things to do in order to kick start the service's personalized social recommendation engine. ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... that “Yelp is doing the kind of fundamental damage to newspapers’ traditional local entertainment listing and reviewing role that ...

Smaller crowd, less frustration at iPhone 3G S launch
VentureBeat — ... Still, even with less insane excitement this year, the launch felt like a real event, with hundreds of waiting customers, news crews, plus developers on-hand to answer questions from the press. Eric Singley, review site Yelp’s product manager for mobile, told me the latest version of Yelp’s iPhone app includes the embeddable maps feature enabled by ...

Memo to iPhone users: Stop the rudeness
iPhone News Updated — If you read any technology news this week — or spent much time reading “Tweets” from friends on Twitter like I did — you may feel like you are missing Some Great Thing by not having an iPhone. The Internet, Apple stores and just about anyone who loves technology was abuzz this week about several new iPhone products. First, the company released the iPhone 3.0 software which includes the much-demanded cut, copy and paste function, a GPS turn-by-turn direction system and programming tools so the exploding industry of iPod application developers can add ...

Get Your Head Out of the Sand
SearchEngineWatch Experts — ... , but that doesn't mean everyone else is going to. A good chunk of your customers or potential customers are involved in social media in some way. They read blogs and reviews; upload photos to Yelp and TripAdvisor; and create their own blogs and vlogs to offer insights, tips, and ...

Be my guide: Reader-driven road trip from New York to Los Angeles
L.A. Times Tech Blog — To mark my transition from intern to full-time journalist with the L.A. Times, I started a cross-country drive on Monday, which I have been blogging for the L.A. Times Daily Travel and Deals Blog. But this isn't your grandfather's road trip. I didn't even take a paper ...

9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim — ... Sometimes footers get the job done, like Yelp’s boring, but effect footer. And sometimes they highlight content you want to rank, like the ...

MojoPages Lands $5 Million; Pushes Local Affiliation Strategy
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... The company itself has been in the middle of transition. Shortly after launching, Carder says it began to move away from its initial focus on being a destination site. It had become quickly apparent that destination sites require lots of community interaction and there are already major entrenched players in the space, such as Yelp and ...

Yelp Integrates Facebook Connect, Online Reviews Becoming Increasingly Social
Inside Facebook — ... The local review-sharing site Yelp has added Facebook Connect to allow users to easily share local business reviews with their friends on Facebook. ...

Preparing for News About You on the Web [WebWorkerDaily]
GigaOM Network — ... recommendation. It was able to post updates on Twitter when its own site was overstretched. Don’t rely on just one site, or just one medium, to get the word out. My customers know that they can get the latest info on my web site, a backup web site on a leased server in another state, on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and by pre-recorded phone message. I’m also experimenting with sites like Get Satisfaction and Yelp as backup information sources. I hope that I never have to implement my ...

Use Social Networks Effectively [WebWorkerDaily]
GigaOM Network — ... Yelp. This review site is new on my radar, but so far, I’m impressed with how active it is (at least in my part of the world). Now that it has a function ...

Cougars, Yuppies, And Sugar Daddies, Oh My! Ex-Googlers Working On Local Startup TownMe
TechCrunch — ... All in all, TownMe is off to a great start, but it’s going to have a long road ahead of it: there are already some big players in the space, namely Yelp, which has become an excellent resource for getting reviews on local restaraurants and activities. Aside from Yelp, TownMe is going to see competition from a number of other sites, including ...

Aloqa raises $1.5M for location-based mobile content
VentureBeat — ... “There are many, many examples of companies that we believe should create ‘location and context triggered’ versions of Aloqa,” he tells me. At the same time, Aloqa is sourcing content from some of these players for its own apps: Google, Yelp, and ...

MeetMe iPhone app solves pesky problem of finding a meeting point
VentureBeat — ... . It’s a fairly simple solution: the app combines Google Maps with Yelp recommendations to suggest a handful of meeting points between two locations. ...

The Favorite iPhone Apps of Five Geek Rock Stars
ReadWriteWeb — Apps on the iPhone are a big deal, but there are so many of them that it can be hard to find the good ones. It's fun to compare your own selections with favorites from friends and we thought it could be fun as well to see what some well known geeks around the web say are their favorite apps. Below you'll find app recommendations from the following people: Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, Chris Messina, open source community organizer, Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global, Baratunde Thurston, Web Editor at The Onion and Andy Baio, founder of Upcoming.org ...

5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business
Mashable! — ... For local businesses with a storefront, sites like Yelp can make a real impact. Yelp allows businesses to create listings with all the necessary information for a consumer to find you, while other customers can review and comment on your business. Many of these sites will let business owners “claim” their listings and add information, such as phone numbers, store hours, menus, etc. ...

MeetMe for iPhone lets you meet friends halfway
iPhone Atlas — Remember MeetWays, that tool we covered that would let you find the exact mid-point between you and someone else? There's now a competing service that does the same thing on your iPhone. MeetMe, from Basara LLC ($1.99 App store link) lets you plot a trip ...

MeetMe for iPhone lets you meet friends halfway
Webware.com — Remember MeetWays, that tool we covered that would let you find the exact mid-point between you and someone else? There's now a competing service that does the same thing on your iPhone. MeetMe, from Basara LLC ($1.99 App store link) lets you plot a trip ...

6 Resources for Tomorrow's Happy Hour
ReadWriteWeb — It's a common fact of life that many work-related conflicts can be solved over a drink. Thousands of secrets have been divulged under the tawdry yellow light of a Amstel Light promotional sign. Low-grade alcohol and smoke-stained pleather booths make for amazingly soothing corporate confessionals. In some dark and magical way, the siren's song of happy hour coaxes coworkers into revealing the real reasons they smite you in the workplace. Messy divorces, deaths in the family and financial turmoil - I've heard it all. If you can uncover the truth you might just be able to save your team. And if your team ...

Top 15 Social Media Resources for Foodies
Mashable! — ... 11. Yelp – Sometimes you just want someone else to do the cooking, and Yelp is easily one of the best places to find a good restaurant. The crowd-powered site offers ratings and reviews of thousands of restaurants (and other local businesses) all over the United States. ...

Open data is the future of web discovery
VentureBeat — ... What might the pairing of real-time with more traditional search data look like? One area is discovering trends. Maybe you like tech, so you look up the top ten most popular web pages (news, start-ups, Twitter accounts, etc.) in the category technology or consumer internet looked at or shared by people in Silicon Valley over the last day. Maybe you’re thinking about visiting New York City and want to find the hottest restaurants, so you look up the most trending popular Yelp restaurant web pages over the last couple months visited by, shared or commented on by people living ...

Facebook’s Open Stream API Grows Stronger
TechCrunch — ... and web services like Yelp — if you start seeing that many of your friends are using a certain app, you’re probably more likely to check it out for yourself. Before now Facebook had shown the icon of whatever application or site was posting to your profile, but it didn’t actually name it. ...

Urbanspoon Is Getting Into the Reservation Business: Takes on OpenTable
ReadWriteWeb — Urbanspoon is getting ready to take on OpenTable, the popular and publicly traded restaurant reservation service. Urbanspoon just started a pilot program with four restaurants in Seattle. Chances are that the company will then slowly expand this service to the rest of the 90+ markets it currently serves. Compared to OpenTable, Urbanspoon offers a fuller range of features for diners, though it is important to note that OpenTable currently offers more features for restaurant owners, though they also have to pay about $300 per month for a dedicated OpenTable ...

TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... Yelp COO Geoff Donaker, subbing at the last minute for a “very ill” CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, told an SF Connect audience that Yelp’s base of 24 million + unique “Yelpers,” 7 million reviews and “thousands” of advertisers represents a rich opportunity for any vertical small business — including Realtors. ...

Yelp iPhone V.3 Hits The AppStore - Find Local Deals
MobileCrunch — ... ability for users to leave reviews on local businesses, a much needed feature since people want to chronicle their experiences as they happen. Version 3, which should be available soon, adds more useful features. The one that really stands out is "Sales And Offers Near You" which lets users find deals that are physically close to them. Sort by distance (in blocks), price, whether the business is open right then, or by neighborhood. Businesses can add special offers for free on their business page. Other features include movable maps, and new ways for users to add ...

YC-Funded GraffitiGeo: Foursquare Meets Yelp, With A Dash Of Augmented Reality
TechCrunch — ... At its core GraffitiGeo allows users to leave brief reviews of restaurants, or for those too lazy to do that, to simply leave a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ — it’s like a highly condensed version of Yelp, or a “Digg for the world”. These reviews and votes can be cast from the site’s ...

GraffitiGeo: Mobile Review App is like "Digg for the Real World"
ReadWriteWeb — ... has just launched with a fresh spin on user-generated reviews. The mobile application is somewhat like a mashup of review site Yelp, mobile social network ...

Despite EveryBlock Deal, MSNBC Isn't Going Local
Contentinople: — ... that there have been 39 crimes reported in the last week, including two robberies, two felony assaults and five burglaries. But it doesn't offer any more details about those crimes, including the names of the people arrested by the New York City Police Department. EveryBlock also scans Websites that contain reviews of local businesses, including Yelp.com . The site also says that two liquor licenses have been applied for in my neighborhood in the last week. MSNBC wouldn't say how much traffic EveryBlock generates. According to ...

Center’d Brings Its Local Discovery Engine To The iPhone
TechCrunch — Center’d, the service that looks to help you figure out what to do with your day, has released a new iPhone application that lets you tap into the site’s restaurant, event, and activity recommendation engine on the go. The application is free and you can grab it here. Center’d competes with sites like Yelp and CitySearch, but instead of simply offering text reviews, the service scours the web for reviews and descriptions and performs semantic analysis on them, allowing you to perform more detailed searches than you ...

Lunch.com Launches Micro Reviews, Reveals Its Quest To Make The World A Better Place
TechCrunch — ... To be sure, review sites aren’t anything new. Neither are so-called ‘micro reviews’ — we’ve seen a number of sites that invite users to submit condensed reviews rather than the lengthier entries you’ll find on sites like Yelp. But there are a few things that make Lunch a little bit different, not the least of which is CEO J.R. Johnson’s ultimate goal with the site: to make the world a better place by changing the way people think about each other. ...

Yelp Releases Its New BlackBerry App
Berry Reporter — ... The Yelp BlackBerry app is available to those who live in the US, UK and Canada.  You can download Yelp by visiting yelp.com from your mobile browser, look for the icon at the top of the page. ...

Yelp Releases A Blackberry App
WebProNews Feed — ... Yelp users, with a Blackberry, can rejoice today as the Blackberry Yelp app has finally been released. To download the app you simply need to visit Yelp.com from your Blackberry, and you'll see the download link. ...

Developers salivating over Twitter's geolocation plans
Macworld — ... to determine whether a location is exact, vague, or just a funny phrase. It will also be useful to know the date and time of a geotagged Twitter message. “With each tweet, a location, date and time could be available, and you could map the route of a person as they travel,” O’Connor said, adding that he has no current plans to add this to his application. One feature he does expect will be enhanced is Myallo HotList’s ability to “discover” nearby entities by calling up data from the Yelp customer reviews site and displaying them as hotter or colder on the map based on ...

WHERE on T-Mobile’s Web2go
dailywireless.org — WHERE, a location-based application that helps consumers to find the people, places, and things around them, is now available to T-Mobile USA customers through T-Mobile’s web2go service. Local content available through WHERE includes weather, news, restaurant reviews, the cheapest gas, movie show times, and the ability to connect with other people on the WHERE Wall. T-Mobile’s web2go service, which offers you the ability to customize your start page and download ringtones, wallpaper, games, and other stuff, is available on smartphones and feature phones for a ...

Yelp Brings First US-Specific Augmented Reality to iPhone Store
ReadWriteWeb — Social review service Yelp has snuck the first Augmented Reality(AR) iPhone app specifically for the US into the iTunes App Store. The undisclosed new feature allows iPhone 3Gs owners cto shake their phones three times to turn on a view called "the Monocle." That view uses the phone's GPS and compass to display markers for restaurants, bars or other nearby businesses on top of your camera view. Blogger Robert Scoble discovered the hidden feature and posted about it on FriendFeed today. A screenshot can be found below. Sponsor ...

Yelp for iPhone's hidden augmented reality feature
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) — ... was certain that I'd get a blank screen. Instead, Yelp found a number of restaurants, bars and other shops right away. The screen is a bit jumpy and you've got to hold the phone REALLY still to get a good look. Plus, unlike Metro Paris Subway, the graphics depicting the different business aren't disgintuishable (restaurant vs. bar, or example). Still, it's a lot of fun and a free way to play with augmented reality. Check out the gallery below for screenshots. Grab Yelp [App Store link] while you can and give it a try. Of course, we'd love to hear about ...

Activate Yelp's Augmented Reality Feature on iPhones [Reviews]
Lifehacker — [image] Yelp, the popular review site with its own location-aware iPhone app, can get even more up-close and personal with its uesrs' takes on everything nearby. Download the app (direct iTunes link there) and fire it up, then shake your phone three times. Now you'll see the closest Yelp-reviewed businesses overlaid on a camera view, giving you that "augmented reality" all the kids are talking about these days. It's a neat hack for hungry travelers, or a deadly distraction for those trying to skirt impulse purchase pressure. [via Gizmodo ]

Augmented Reality: 3 Apps for That
dailywireless.org — Social review service Yelp has snuck the first Augmented Reality (AR) iPhone app specifically for the US into the iTunes App Store, reports ReadWriteWeb. It uses the phone’s GPS and compass to display markers for restaurants, bars and other nearby businesses on top of the camera’s view. One hour later, ReadWriteWeb reports: The Wall Has Fallen: 3 Augmented Reality Apps Now Live in iPhone App Store. ...

Yelp Arrives on BlackBerry
IntoMobile - Cell Phone News, Information, and Analysis — After looking into the new Yelp apps for the iPhone and Palm Pre, it turns out a BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) version was churned out recently as well. While not quite as snazzy as the iPhone’s augmented reality angle, the BlackBerry app should offer all the same ...

RobotVision: A Bing-powered iPhone Augmented Reality Browser
ReadWriteWeb — Bing Local Search has some interesting features you won't find in Google, so the prospect of seeing Bing listings appear on top of your iPhone's camera viewer when you point at a restaurant or business is intriguing. That's what forthcoming iPhone app RobotVision offers - and it displays a view of Tweets and Flickr photos published nearby wherever you are. RobotVision is a new Augmented Reality (AR) app for the iPhone 3Gs. It's not available yet but it will be as soon as AR apps are formally welcomed into the App Store by Apple, probably some time next month. AR browsers "turn ...

How Yelp May Have Further Harmed The App Store Approval Process With Its Easter Egg
TechCrunch — Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Matt Galligan, CEO of CrashCorp, a company working on a product called SimpleGeo providing “location as a service” as well as an Augmented Reality SDK for app developers. (We covered their founding here.) As such, Galligan clearly has a stake in the AR game, but he was genuinely surprised by the revelation of the AR element to the Yelp app update yesterday. You can follow Matt on Twitter here. Yelp has had no shortage of hullabaloo surrounding the most recent improvement to ...

Augment Your 3GS Reality – Yelp for iPhone 3GS
The Gadgeteer — The new Yelp application on the iPhone 3GS has an awesome Easter egg: Augmented Reality. I’ve been really looking forward to trying this out, but note you do need to have an iPhone 3GS for this to work right now. Once you download the app to your iPhone 3GS, you need to open Yelp and shake it a bit ( I’ve heard 3 times, but it took like 5 for mine to work ) until a message about Monocle being activated pops up. Then you’ll see the ‘Monocle’ button on the top right; hit it and you’ll see a camera view with ...

Fwix, a Local ‘Real Time Newswire,’ Goes Mobile for Easy Submissions
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... The opportunities for “citizen journalism” and “consumer nation” are there. Social  and hyperlocal media sites like Yelp and ...

Waiter, There Is a Fly in My Soup (and I Have an iPhone)
Bits — Are online user reviews better when they are written in the heat of the moment or after the writer has returned to the home computer and had some time to cool off? That is the question facing review sites like Yelp and ...

Bits: Waiter, There Is a Fly in My Soup (and I Have an iPhone)
NYT > Technology — Are online user reviews better when they are written in the heat of the moment or after the writer has returned to the home computer and had some time to cool off? That is the question facing review sites like Yelp and ...

Yelp Is Growing 80 Percent A Year, While Citysearch Remains Flat
TechCrunch — Say what you will about the quality of the reviews on Yelp or the lengths it will go to get verboten features into its iPhone app, it has made the jump from Web 2.0 darling to a mainstream service. Over the past year, Yelp has nearly doubled its U.S. audience, while incumbent CitySearch has remained flat. In July, Yelp had 8.6 million unique U.S. visitors, up 80 percent from a year ago. Citysearch, on the other hand, literally had zero growth, staying at 15.4 million uniques, although it bottomed at 13 million in April and has come back up since then ...

Foodspotting lets you find the foods you love — not just the restaurants
VentureBeat — Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Foodspotting, below. Foodspotting, a young web-based food guide that takes reviews beyond restaurants to the actual dishes, gave such an impressive pitch at ...

Does your reality need augmenting? Try these apps
Webware.com — ... Get Yelp on the iPhone 3GS (download). A secret feature (shake the phone three times to activate it when Yelp is running) overlays restaurant names and user ratings over the video you're looking at. So you can see, in theory, a review score hovering over the image of the restaurant you're standing right outside of. Get Layar for an Android Phone. Layar is a building block AR platform that can use datasets from other providers. There's Yelp, for example (although the pure Yelp iPhone app is a bit better). Layar can also show you Twitter posts ...

Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Launches Consumer-Facing Features
TechCrunch — ... for merchants in smaller towns to advertise to consumers. MerchantCircle has long targeted its site’s features towards merchants versus catering towards the consumer, as sites like Yelp and ...

Nokia's Sad Augmented Reality
Fast Company - Technology — Yesterday, Nokia released a well-produced video demonstrating what they apparently believe to be the future of augmented reality apps. If you haven't been keeping up with AR, it's just used to denote an information layer placed over what you see. And while AR will certainly be a part of all our realities in the next few years, Nokia has it all wrong. The video: Viscerally, it's exciting; at least one blog called the demo "the bomb." But as ReadWriteWeb rightly notes, the question we should be asking is how AR apps can actually improve our physical lives--not how ...

Mobile Search 101, Part 1
SearchEngineWatch Experts — ... you want a list of restaurants to choose from. You go to a browser and you do a search. You may use a ZIP code or a city name to get the search localized in order to find a restaurant within driving distance. You then find a couple restaurants you like and print out the map for directions. Now contrast that to using a GPS-enabled smart phone. You head outside and use a program or "app" that lets you search for restaurants. If you have an iPhone, you might use a GPS-aware app like Yelp , ...

TC50: RedBeacon Lets You Hire Local Service Providers Online, Without Any Phone Calls
TechCrunch — ... The web is loaded with sites offering listings and reviews for local services, with mainstays like Yelp and Craigslist leading the pack. But when it comes to actually executing a transaction with one of these service providers — establishing details like establishing a price and timing — most people still turn to their phone books to call the service. ...

TechCrunch50: Businesses that match you up
Webware.com — SAN FRANCISCO--At the TechCrunch50 conference (coverage), I'm a little surprised we haven't seen any dating sites yet. After all, the economy may be in shambles, but the Internet never ceases to come up with new ways to help people meet. Matchmaking is still in the air though--and this time there's money involved. Local Bacon, Red Beacon, and Mota Motors, three newly-announced startups have a very similar aim: doing something better than Craigslist, and making money off it. In Local Bacon's case it's helping job seekers and employees find each other by ...

TechCrunch50: SeatGeek advises you when to buy tickets to the big game
L.A. Times Tech Blog — It's the ticket-scalping conundrum: Will it be cheaper to buy seats in advance of the event or will prices drop as it gets closer to game time and the sellers want to unload their wares? SeatGeek, a new company that showed its stuff at the ...

RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009
TechCrunch — ... Using the site will be easy for anyone who has used a local review service like Yelp. Simply type whatever service you’re looking for (be it plumber, gardener, or hair stylist), and the site will present a list of recommended service providers in your area. RedBeacon also employees natural language processing so it can figure out exactly what you’re looking for (for example, “Cupcake maker” would search for any bakers in the area). The site will then present a list of profiles for each match, featuring reviews and comments from other users, basic ...

The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd
ReadWriteWeb — ... It's not surprising then to discover that, when it comes to review sites, it's again small groups that are in control there too. Some sites, including Amazon, attempt to address this discrepancy by allowing users to vote on the helpfulness of reviews - a much easier process than having to write a review yourself. Also, local business finder and recommendations site Yelp implemented ways for business owners to respond to what they feel are inaccurate reviews by way of an owner ...

DEMO: Lunchster automatically books your lunch dates
VentureBeat — ... You can see the location of your friend on a Google Map. Upon receiving an invitation, your friend can click on the map and see nearby restaurant recommendations from Yelp, which scours the local area for the most convenient places to meet your friend. ...

MeetMe makes meeting up easier
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) — Filed under: App Store, App Review Pam recently moved to New York City to attend art school in pursuit of her life long dream of becoming an artist. Unfortunately, this puts 120 or so miles between Pam and her boyfriend, Jim, who happens to live in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Despite the distance between them, they manage to visit each other frequently -- often times at rest stops centrally located between the two cities. Obviously, finding new and different places for the two to meet may prove trying, as it would be for many in a similar situation. But, fortunately ...

Bored? Goby helps you find things to do
Webware.com — New search engine Goby is launching Tuesday night, and unlike Microsoft's Bing, or Hunch, Goby really is a "decision engine"--enabling users to very quickly find something to do nearby or in a far away place. Its task-centric search tool is comprised of three ...

CallSpark: A Dynamic Mobile Address Book
ReadWriteWeb — ... , and Yelp. But CallSpark isn't simply a useful address book service, it also lets you view real-time information about whoever you're calling. For people, that includes the most recent social networking updates from ...

DEMO: Cortera Measures Business Credit With Community Ratings
TechCrunch — ... Cortera can be thought of as a Yelp for business credit, offering reviews on large and small businesses alike that have been submitted by the community. In other words, it can help you figure out if a company you’re thinking of dealing with is going to pay you in a timely fashion, or if it’s run by deadbeats who should be avoided. ...

Smarter Transportation: 10 Social Media Tools to Navigate Your City
Mashable! — ... BONUS: Yelp Once you’ve figured out how to navigate around your city using social media tools, you need somewhere to go. The first place to turn to find your city’s hotspots should be Yelp, a ...

Internet M&A: There’s More To Come
BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily — ... Zillow: Online real-estate sales. eHarmony: Online matchmaking. Digg: News aggregation. Exact Target:E-mail marketing. Rock You: Applications for social networking sites. Slide: More applications for social networking sites. Foresee: Web analytics Yelp: Consumer reviews As for public companies that could be targets, ...

Internet M&A: More To Come
BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily — ... Zillow: Online real-estate sales. eHarmony: Online matchmaking. Digg: News aggregation. Exact Target:E-mail marketing. Rock You: Applications for social networking sites. Slide: More applications for social networking sites. Foresee: Web analytics Yelp: Consumer reviews As for public companies that could be targets, ...

Online Ad Deals Are Still Clicking
bMighty.com - Features — ... ads that appear on top of or to the right of search results. Google's popular AdWords program is small-business friendly: it's self-serve, there is no minimum budget, and you pay only when customers click on your ad, Baehr says. Since many other Web pages use Google for searches within their site -- and display the ads as well -- you have another way to increase your visibility. If your business is primarily local, consider using niche sites such as CitySearch or Yelp ; packages on the latter start from $300 a month. "They have very exciting local listings ...

A Partnership Between Old and New Media
Bits — ... building in New York. That is perhaps telling, as readers increasingly turn to blogs like Curbed’s — which cover real estate, dining and shopping in big cities — instead of print newspapers. But the relationship between Curbed and the Village Voice is not the classic tale of an online publication eating away at a print publication’s circulation and advertising. Instead, the two publishing companies are helping one another. Curbed — like Yelp , ...

Bits: A Partnership Between Old and New Media
NYT > Technology — ... building in New York. That is perhaps telling, as readers increasingly turn to blogs like Curbed’s — which cover real estate, dining and shopping in big cities — instead of print newspapers. But the relationship between Curbed and the Village Voice is not the classic tale of an online publication eating away at a print publication’s circulation and advertising. Instead, the two publishing companies are helping one another. Curbed — like Yelp , ...

My Favorite iPhone Apps [WebWorkerDaily]
GigaOM Network — ... maps of where I went. I also use DailyBurn as the one place where I keep track of all of my workouts: outdoor running, walking, cardio machines at the gym, weightlifting, etc. Let’s face it, I just like to keep track of stuff. It helps me stay motivated when I can review my progress over time. Just for fun: I also have quite a few apps that I use just for fun that don’t really impact my work productivity. Yelp to find nearby restaurants and Forkfly see if they have any deals available. ...

10 early stage start-ups from Vator.tv's Juice Pitcher
Webware.com — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The month of September was jam-packed with the launch of more than 100 new start-ups and services at high-profile conferences like Demo Fall and TechCrunch50. In a much smaller gathering Tuesday night at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus, just 10 companies--all in the seed stage--got to pitch as part of Vator.tv's Juice Pitcher event. Some were new, while many were already launched and looking to pick up investments to get off the ground. These range from a new service that helps you rent out your car to strangers when you're not using it, to a mobile app that lets ...

Smarter Food: How Social Media is Making Our Cities Tastier
Mashable! — ... Social media and the web are also changing food from a consumer perspective. The most obvious way is by making good food easier to locate. Social review sites like Yelp, the ...

UI Matters: How an Interface-Lift Can Make or Break a Brand
Advertising Age - Homepage — ... and the like. Controversial? Yes. Effective? Definitely. Yelp.com : The battle for a differentiated UI extends to mobile as well. Yelp.com recently made waves -- and leapfrogged the competition -- by releasing an augmented reality browser for the iPhone. The browser and "transparent" UI take advantage of the phone's camera, built-in GPS and Yelp's own listings to create a mashed-up UI for our physical world. All of these companies understand that a differentiated UI, and thereby a differentiated experience, provide a tangible competitive advantage. More forward-thinking ...

How Yelp deals with everybody getting four stars (on average)
VentureBeat — ... Yelp, a community recommendations site, is the first that comes to mind facing this problem. The average rating for its more than 7 million reviews is 3.8 stars (out of five). Co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman ...

Top 100 Real-Time Web Companies
ReadWriteWeb — ... Loopt Social Networking Vyoom Social Networking Yelp Social Networking Twones Social Networking ...

iAte: Sorting Twitter for Dining Tips
BIA/Kelsey Blog — ... Portland, ORE-based founder George DeCarlo III, a veteran of the domain registry business, describes himself as a “foodie” and feels iAte is going to be a valuable supplement to the diner reviews that appear on a Yelp or ...

Web 3.0: The Building Block Web
Stay N' Alive — Repost Tim O’Reilly is well-known not only for his successful publishing company (which I have written for), but also for his definition of the term, “Web 2.0″, in summary defining the web as a platform, moving from the desktop to the cloud. I’d like to propose we are in the process of taking that one step further, perhaps even moving to our foundations, taking components of that platform, and enabling others to use those components in their own applications. Some talk about the “real-time web” being Web 3.0, ...

Use TownMe’s data to build your own Foursquare (or other location-based app)
VentureBeat — ... is trying to carve out a place for itself among the Yelps of the world with a smarter approach to how it collects location-based data. And it’s not just keeping that data for itself — it’s letting developers outside the company use it to build their own applications. ...

Foursquare: Not Just a Game, But a City Guide
Bits — ... offers free WiFI and outlets.” When users check into a location on Foursquare, they receive a notification of what other members in their network have suggested in that area. In addition, after firing up the application, users can see all the tips input by Foursquare users for a particular geographic area or just the ones submitted by their friends. One user, Emily Woolf, the creative strategist featured in my article, said she uses Foursquare’s tip system instead of a service like Yelp to navigate strange neighborhoods. She prefers Foursquare to iPhone applications that ...

Foursquare: Not Just a Game, But a City Guide
NYT > Technology — ... offers free WiFI and outlets.” When users check into a location on Foursquare, they receive a notification of what other members in their network have suggested in that area. In addition, after firing up the application, users can see all the tips input by Foursquare users for a particular geographic area or just the ones submitted by their friends. One user, Emily Woolf, the creative strategist featured in my article, said she uses Foursquare’s tip system instead of a service like Yelp to navigate strange neighborhoods. She prefers Foursquare to iPhone applications that ...

Trending Topics: Plan Your Travels Like a Geek
Maximum PC all RSS Feed — ... is a startup that aims to connect travelers with native residents, with the goal of answering questions and finding cool stuff to do that might have otherwise flown under the radar. And while you may not think of Yelp as being a travel site, it’s a great way to find honest reviews of hotels and restaurants from all over the U.S. (and increasingly in international locations like ...

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips
Mashable! — ... Yelp publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to “check in” by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter. Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you ...

CHOW Launches Foodie-Powered Restaurant Guide [Restaurants]
Lifehacker — [image] [image] Yelp is fine and good when you want passionate/brutal rants (and, occasionally, raves) about any and every store. For a more focused, and likely refined, local search, try long-standing foodie site CHOW's new restaurant guide. CHOW, the site hosting the forums better known as Chowhound, pulls reviews and comments from its deep forum archives and articles to provide lists of the best-reviewed grub around, as well as fairly sophisticated category filtering. Tastes are personal, of course, but where CHOW might really come in handy is finding a certain cuisine in a particular city. "Where can ...

Augmented Reality Goes Mobile
MacBytes.com — ... It was the shake heard 'round the world. On Aug. 27, 2009, berblogger Robert Scoble uncovered a hidden software feature buried within an iPhone application that provides access to Yelp.com reviews. The secret, it turns out, was that users needed to shake the phone to activate the capability, known as Monocle. In the wake of Scoble's discovery, shared publicly via FriendFeed, iPhone users far and wide could be seen shaking their iPhones to get access to the new feature. Yet the frenzy was about more than the novelty of how to open it, or even the trove of ...

The Top 10 Mobile Applications of 2012
ReadWriteWeb — ... that's only a little over a year away, it could just be too soon for AR to see the widespread adoption that we hoped it would have by then. Or it's possible that - as some have suspected - AR is simply a "cool" way to see and interact with the world around you, but hasn't produced any "must-have," highly useful applications just yet. For example, seeing AR views of local businesses and user recommendations is fun, but is it a markedly better experience than using a service like Yelp? For many, that answer today is "no." AR needs to grow out of being an technology ...

Secrets to Getting Good Reviews Online
Inc.com — ... Consider asking for reviews. Not good reviews, just reviews, and not until the end of the transaction. “You don’t want to be pushy, but after you’ve delivered a service or product, it makes sense to ask that they review it on Yelp, for instance,” Arango says. “Let them know that the company takes their opinions seriously and checks that feedback daily.” The request should come after a meaningful interaction of some sort, not with every routine transaction, he adds. “Personally, it rubs me the ...

Foodspotting: Foursquare meets Food Porn
ReadWriteWeb — After eating the best meal of your life, it's hard to forget the experience. It's not unusual for individuals to spend a decade in search of the perfect New York-style pizza in California or the best ramen in London. At this level of obsession, you simply can't be satiated by reading menus or scouring the blurry restaurant pictures and user-generated diatribes of regular review sites. Whether you've got a fixation on fresh lobster ragoût or a hankering for hickory smoked ham, Foodspotting lets hungry users peruse through what can only be described as food porn. ...

GrabMyTable Lets Mom And Pop Restaurants Easily Serve Up Websites
TechCrunch — As more consumers turn to sites like Yelp and Citysearch to find restaurants, it’s important for establishments of all sizes to have a website. While larger restaurants may have more resources to create an informative consumer-facing site, the mom and pop restaurants out there need an easy way to create a presence online. GrabMyTable is hoping to be a resource for restaurants to create websites easily as well as a restaurant discovery platform for consumers. We have free lifetime subscriptions for the first five TechCrunch readers and ...

8 tips for surviving long-distance discount bus travel
Gadling — ... , you can check routes, prices and schedules from multiple bus companies, plus see what amenities are offered on your bus. You can also read Yelp reviews to see what kind of experience others have had. ...

Bing Maps Beta Launches with Twitter Integration and Better Streetview
ReadWriteWeb — At Microsoft's San Francisco campus this morning, a room full of tech journalists were treated to their first glimpse of Bing Maps Beta. When Microsoft talked about it's efforts towards geospatial projects, many were skeptical but it looks like the search giant has delivered. Sponsor Bing Maps is built on Silverlight and offers 3 different viewing dimensions. The most interesting, the 3D Streetside (street view), offers seamless stitched imagery for 100 major cities at this time. As for bird's eye view, the mapping service has data on about 95% of the US. ...

PC Magazine's top 40 free iPhone apps
Yahoo! Tech Advisors — ... - Many an iPhone Twitter client is out there; this is the Twitter client that I also use. Yelp - Shut out at a sushi bar without a reservation a couple of weeks ago but still hungry for unagi, we turned to Yelp to find another solid sushi joint five blocks away. Ocean trout? Why not. ...and here a couple of my own faves that PC Mag missed ...