Comments on: Judy’s Book To Shut Down. Yelp Is The Last of The Local Review Sites Still Standing.

By: New Issue: Garrett Dimon on Web Forms : Cosmic Era

New Issue: Garrett Dimon on Web Forms : Cosmic Era — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:16:17 +0000

[...] company announced yesterday that it will be closing it’s doors, most of it’s staff was let go sometime yesterday. [...]

By: TechCrunch en français » [fr] Qype lance aujourd'hui sa version française de ses guides locaux et annonce un tour de table

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:12:28 +0000

[...] d’un secteur lucratif mais risqué. Yelp aux Etats-Unis fait recette mais beaucoup ont disparu en cours de route. Le principe est simple vous pouvez sur ces services trouver des recommandations [...]

By: jason mcdowall

jason mcdowall — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:18:33 +0000

Check out Edgelocal.com. they are a local search and review site. Starting with Florida.

Jason

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:08:20 +0000

For those interested, I’d love feedback on my site, http://www.myfriendsuggests.com , while we do allow reviews like Yelp, we focus on using your personal tastes to find you other places you’ll enjoy using a colloborative filtering algorithm (like what netflix and amazon use). So far our data shows good results in predicting places you’ll like.

Thanks.

By: Always self-plugging - Tech Soapbox

Always self-plugging - Tech Soapbox — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:18:38 +0000

[...] in point: TechCrunch’s post on Judy’s Book shutting down. There are six companies plugging themselves. Without really saying much. Kudos to JD Amer from [...]

By: Ed Rosenberg

Ed Rosenberg — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:48:16 +0000

JB - Poor management. I really feel sorry for the people who invested their hard earned money in the mismanged, Ignition Partners fund (the VC who dumped all the money in the dumb idea, without having a clue about doing due diligence on the biz plan).

By: Local Businesses Online

Local Businesses Online — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:46:47 +0000

Users, by and large can get information online. The internet is by far much more fulfilling than a 411 or Yellowpages lookup.

Most local businesses owners, however, are missing out on the opportunities to advertise online.

Where do you want to be found today?
… everywhere people search …

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:42:34 +0000

I think there is plenty of room in the local social networking space. I’m involved with a a website that launched recently in Charlotte, NC (where I live) called Neighborology. We are barebones so we don’t need to worry about pleasing our investors. =)

By: fuzoor

fuzoor — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:48:28 +0000

j@47: i agree … (see my comment #21) … Andy was super dismissive of some ideas, like yours, even though college kids have *lots* of money (particularly in terms of credit these days, but also many parents give their college kids spending money, and some of us have jobs in college).

it’s like he didn’t care enough to give that idea, and several others, some serious consideration.

By: j

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:15:11 +0000

brownstoner– that was the whole plan w/ JB, insider pages and others. it didn’t work (obviously). reason being is that these sites were betting on the “value added” from their “local deals” or “trust your friends’ reviews”. in the end what really played was social networking without gimmicks, targetted to young users who are very conscious about their social lives.

By: j

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:11:09 +0000

erm… 2004 it ’twas…

By: Brownstoner

Brownstoner — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:10:33 +0000

I’ve always thought it was a shaky proposition that a generic, national site would be able to generate enough good will with local users to get them to contribute rich content on a regular basis. I’m biased, of course, but I think sites with an established local user base are much more likely to crack this nut. Then some VC-backed company with a web 2.0-sounding name can buy them up AFTER they’ve got the critical mass of content.

By: mas90guru

mas90guru — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:12:23 +0000

Here’s my example of why I think Yelp! is on life support.

Every so often you’re going to get a post by a user that cross the line from being helpful to being offensive.

The purpose of a company like Yelp, is to have a system that can manage these types of posts. Better yet you need a vibrant community that helps to keep things orderly.

On September 10, 2007 - one of the members flagged as “Yelp Elite 07″ posted this review (see the review attributed to member “Stephen I” written 9/10/07 and ends with the comment F**k off busboy, starts by proclaiming that the place s*cks big d**k and primarily rants about being told to remove a baseball cap while in the restaurant)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/B6ftNB.....dAJz5z0QHQ

I don’t particularly care that members go wild and post this type of thing. It happens all the time. I’ve participated in dozens of sites where I have seen messages cross the line.

BUT - the messages are usually all taken care of rather quickly when they cross the line from being helpful content to be obscenity laced tirades of questionable value.

Yelp was notified on several occasions through the tools on their site that the use of f*ck off in a review might not be the best choice.

So far as I can tell nothing happened - no maintenance. Thus I conclude that Yelp is on life support and again reinforce my prediction of them being an excellent candidate for the death pool.

By: j

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:16:25 +0000

Did an internship at Judy’s Book when it first started summer of 2001. I showed my Andy a recently-founded but little-known site called “The Facebook” and suggested we consider marketing college kids (like I was at the time.) He laughed and said “That’s nice, but who the hell cares? College kids have no money.”

Oops.

By: lawrence

lawrence — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:21:56 +0000

Oh yeah, Yelp, who raised even more money, DOES seem to be mapping to that trajectory. They’re killing it.

By: lawrence

lawrence — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:20:30 +0000

I see Judy’s Book as a victim of raising too much money. When you raise $10.5M, it puts an awful lot of pressure on you to get massive in a hurry to get to an exit in which people actually get paid. When your trajectory doesn’t seem to be mapping to a big exit, the plug gets pulled.

I thought that Judy’s Book was a pretty nice effort, and I followed Andy’s very transparent blog regularly. I didn’t see a lot of errors in execution. My opinion is that the biggest mistake they made was panicking at the big rounds raised by Insider Pages and Yelp, and piling $7M more on an initial institutional round of $2.5M. With 12 people and a UGC driven business model, they had no business taking on such a heavy round.

By: Chino66

Chino66 — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:02:44 +0000

Citysearch is mentioned in the post by Michael, but not in any forum posts. How is it doing?( And how is IAC as a whole?)

By: Sylvain Carle

Sylvain Carle — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:37:01 +0000

As others have already stated, this is quite a diverse space, the game is just starting, it’s far from over.

It’s an industry with billions in revenue for traditional publishing, I don’t see how this will not significantly move online [1,2]…

Full disclosure/pr/pseudo-linkbait : I am the CTO of Praized Media and we are quite active hacking the weave of the web to make sure local platforms are part of any serious internet publishers playbook… (insightfuls ones will find us!)

1. http://blog.searchenginewatch......907-090546

2. http://www.bizreport.com/2006/.....llion.html

By: Thricer

Thricer — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:17:53 +0000

I wonder what’s going to happen to their sister site, couponlooker.com

By: Newton

Newton — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:06:09 +0000

yet another comment re: “last one standing” . . .
Menuism.com is a solid local reviews site and they’re still around. Apparently bootstrapped without millions by two UC Berkeley alumni.

By: Jeff Gannon

Jeff Gannon — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:04:23 +0000

The founder’s name is Andy Sack not Andy Sacks.

By: Yelp Sucks

Yelp Sucks — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:48:32 +0000

yelp is going into the deadpool next. don’t believe the hype. free beer and parties only last so long and don’t constitute a sustainable business model.

By: Philip

Philip — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:55:41 +0000

It has always puzzled me how a site that sells “Make me Yelp” panties
http://www.yelp.com/store expects to one day sell advertising to landscapers, dentists and vets — otherwise known known as the local business community.

BUT maybe they don’t plan to. Maybe the future is selling event guide sponsorships to Beck’s beer.

That’s a fine plan — certainly works for CitySearch and TimeOut magazine in London.

It’s just a different plan than what Google, Kudzu and Superpages appear to have in mind. Their’s is less sexy (YellowPage panties would be a non starter. Does Kudzu clothing give you a rash?). But it is where the $100B is presently spent.

By: Mark Mayhew

Mark Mayhew — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:44:22 +0000

I’ll bid $50 for the Judys Book domain name (yeah, I’m feelin’ generous today!)
(Same for Yelp.com)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:11:36 +0000

If you read a review on Yelp that you find particularly useful, add that person as one of your “fans.” By picking out individual users you find trustworthy, you push their reviews to the top on the business profile page when you are logged in. This is key to limiting the noise everyone complains about. You have to put a little effort in on your part, but you end up with a usable site in the end. If you can’t be bothered to take that step, then stop going to UGC review sites and stick with Zagat. Personally, I find the “fan” concept very useful because my opinions don’t necessarily fall in line with the mainstream. I can highlight the reviews that are useful only to me. For example, if you’re a vegetarian and someone who is not writes a review about a vegan restaurant, slamming it for “not tasting like meat at all,” then you don’t care about that. Likewise, if a vegetarian rates a steakhouse poorly because “they slaughter thousands of helpless animals a week,” that’s useless to…well, just about everyone. UGC sites give back what you put in.