Yelp’s having a bad day. It may not be as bad as the day iMindi is having, who managed to delete all their user accounts, but it’s still a doozy.
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 create one heck of an offensive and awkward situation. Apart, those words are fine. Put them together and people go nuts.
The title has been changed to “Corrected: A Bicycle Built For Yelp!” along with a message “Due to an editorial oversight, an earlier version of the Weekly Yelp contained a headline that was inappropriate for the context. We apologize for the mistake.” They’re also apologizing on Twitter, where the newsletter became quite the topic of conversation.
I’ve heard people spend hours and even days creating their headlines. I wonder how much time was spent on that one?
“hours and even days” sounds like hyperbole. The right person can toss these titles off like that (*snap*). All it takes is a big vocabulary and an associative mind.
However, the word “toss” would also not be the most appropriate one to use in this context.
I’ve been involved with email marketing. Believe me, if someone in the Marketing department has final say, it can be hours or days before anything is approved. Hours or freaking days.
Are they lazy?
DailyCandy e-mailed a newsletter last week a hip hop themed newsletter with the subject line “Dolla Dolla Bill Y’all”…
the day after Dolla was shot and killed in a mall.
Given their topic and audience, I doubt that headline would ever be considered a good choice.
I emailed the SF Women Against Rape when I read Yelp’s newsletter this morning. I couldn’t believe it. I’m glad I was not the only person who found it offensive and such bad judgment on Yelp’s part.
I can’t believe anyone would actually get *offended* over what was obviously a simple oversight.
“Bad judgment” would have occurred here if somebody at Yelp had seen the juxtaposition and decided to post it anyway. This is probably just a case of “the person who posted the headline didn’t even know who was sponsoring the page.”
I can’t believe you were offended by this. You’re outrageous.
I mean, you’re perfect and have never, ever, ever made a mistake.
first post
‘
fail
unfailed
As @johnhayato said, silver lining is that it brings more awareness to SF Women Against Rape. Poor Yelp…get back on that bicycle, We forgive you.
Lame. What a waste of your time, Mike. What a waste of our time, techcrunch. Catchy headline, hopes of real news, with some substance. And then this? Come on!
This is why companies need to hire writers or learn to treat their writers with a little more love.
No excuse for this. The title itself was risque, and well thats….a risk. Epic Fail. Sponsors beware.
I do believe an ‘aough’ is in place for that pairing. Again, the ad+content disasters are not exactly uncommon in the age of auto-matching.
Pretty epic fail there. I wonder how many female employees Yelp has?
probably less now that this time last week, a few probably walked out in disgust, and some may have walked back in (the economy you know, harder to get another job)
but as for auto-matching ads and content, some one has an evil sense of humour…
Apparently, yelp.com is taking a lot of heat from business owners, and I believe they deserve it. As a business owner, I am highly upset at the way yelp decides to remove good reviews of our businesses, and allows the crass and negative reviews to remain. They explain: they pulled off ones that may have been written by a friend of the store owner. That’s stupid! Isn’t the goal of store owner to make friends out of their customers? Isn’t a positive review helpful to consumers? Check out the reviews of yelp.com itself – very enlightening about how they censor our reviews. http://www.yelp.../query:yelp.com
wait, so… they should take down negative reviews but keep ones that could be biased based on personal relationships? that doesn’t make any sense from a user perspective
Difficult to say whether the headline writers even knew who the sponsor would be… If this juxtaposition was intentional on anyone’s part, it’s totally fucked.
That said, however, I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt that nobody at Yelp intended this outcome, and so I celebrate this as an epic failure of happenstance.
You can bet that Yelp will deploy a “preview” functionality to screen for this sort of circumstance within three release cycles of the current release of their site.
Really? Who fucking cares? Why do we have to worry about possibly offending any and every goddamn group out there?
Seriously people…deal with it. No harm was intended.
But offending a sponsor kind of sucks, no?
this is what we’re upset about? really? words on a page. likely an honest mistake. they apologized. get over it.
This is worth talking about?
lol at iMindi deleting their accounts. Talk about dropping the ball.
I like that you worked twitter into the story.
lol, best comment ever.
I don’t get it – sf women against rape should want FUN between their legs more than anyone. How is the juxtaposition itself offensive, unless you are a complete looking-for-what-ain’t-there ass? Replace ‘fun’ with ‘violence’, and I’d totally get it, but…
But I do agree that, given the nature of the sponsor, exactly such asses may have become offended and threatened to pull real future/present dollars, which is all good.
Chin up, Yelp. Intention is important, no matter what other folks say, and you did everything right all the way through.
My cat’s breath smells like cat food.
I call this “Sweet Meat Breath”.
This sort of thing happens in various industries once in a while. It’s unfortunate, and more often than not, an innocent mistake. Live and learn…Yelp will be ok.
Funny funny stuff. Thanks for sharing. Love entertainment before bed. Out.
People focusing on this and the back and forth Yelp is doing with that East Bay rag.
What’s more compelling is the amount of churn their sales has been going through in 2009. Yelp has hired about 100 sales people in the last 9 months. Less 40 remain with about 1/2 that being attributed to pink slips while 1/2 just thought working their was a nightmare and left.
We like to put Yelp on this web 2.0 pedestal, but by all accounts its really a boiler room with a smidgen of innovation behind it.
Their shtick has worn thin with local businesses and its employees.
So shocking no one else is talking about this.
Bah! I had no idea that SFWAR even existed before this innocuous event happened. Was it Mae West who famously said “I don’t care what you say about me, just make sure you spell my name right”?
No, that was May Vest.
This looks to me very intentional, very cynical and very effective. Yelp’s been out of the headlines for a little while.
If they spend hours on the newsletter, how in the world could they have missed that?
Maybe it’s automatic pairing? Check out the HUGE fail on the screenshot I happened to pick up on election day:
http://img43.im...newpictureb.png
it’s fitting. Yelp is a cesspool… sort of like reading the crap on a bathroom stall wall.
Do we need any more proof that yelp is run by a bunch of idiots? Businesses aren’t exactly lining up to advertise with yelp, yet they take no care in ensuring that the few sponsors they have left are treated with respect. Yelp has been caught in an uncontrollable downward spiral for some time now, and I predict a very hard and final face plant any day now.
Why is SFWAR supporting a business like yelp anyway? Yelp has been screwing small business owners up the ass for years via extortionist sales tactics. I’d think SFWAR would be against that sort of thing.
Do we need any more proof that yelp is run by a bunch of idiots? Businesses aren’t exactly lining up to advertise with yelp, yet they take no care in ensuring that the few sponsors they have left are treated with respect. Yelp has been caught in an uncontrollable downward spiral for some time now, and I predict a final face plant any day now.
Really? This is news?
I like very much the writings and pictures and explanations in your adress so I look forward to see your next writings.
To provide useful information, please click to view
Bose headphones
ghd Hair Straightener
Women is Dakota
Sundance UGG Boots
Thank you!