It may be in the process of hiring a new CEO, but the MySpace machine keeps on rolling. Last month we got our first look at MySpace Local, the joint project between Citysearch and MySpace that combines the popular social network with Citysearch’s extensive database of business listings. The new property has quietly launched the public, and you can check it out here.
While MySpace is relying on Citysearch’s massive database of business listings (which includes hours, addresses, photos, menus, and videos), it’s starting from scratch on the review side of things. That might have handicapped a smaller site, but given MySpace’s audience, it shouldn’t take too long for the site to get populated: since it went live seven days ago, MySpace users have already written over 60,000 reviews.
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 here.
As we wrote recently, the new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its existing GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write reviews directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. This was sorely lacking in the original version. The tips will be accessible on the iPhone app and the site itself (if popular) and will also be shown in a feed using GPS capabilities when users search businesses.
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.
In the next few days, Yelp will be launching a new version of its popular iPhone app which we’ve reviewed. The new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its exiting GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write review directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. This was sorely lacking in the original version. The tips will be accessible on the iPhone app and the site itself (if popular) and will also be shown in a feed using GPS capabilities when users search businesses. Like before, the app leverages GPS in the iPhone to list reviews, tips, and photos written and taken around a users location. The app will also feature a Friend Feed feature that will pull in your friends activities. Users can also draft a full review of a restaurant, bar or business from their iPhone and then post it later to Yelp.com. Yelp is also upgrading the app to become more compatible in Canada and the UK.
MySpace and Citysearch are jointly announcing a new MySpace property this morning called MySpace Local. The site combines Citysearch business listings (including address, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours of location) from a thousand cities with the MySpace community. The site is launching into private beta this week, with a general U.S. launch next month.
The new site will eventually include listing information for all Citysearch businesses via small business listing pages. To start just restaurants, bars and “nightlife” listings are included. Users can rate and review businesses, which is shared via the MySpace activity feed.
Don’t just skip over that last sentence. This is good stuff - users will be able to see the restaurants, bars and other businesses that their friends are interested in, and how they rated those businesses. When you first visit MySpace Local, the first thing you see are reviews from friends.
Listings are grouped into city hubs for all major U.S. cities and include new local search functionality. And eventually, MySpace says, users will be able to make reservations and upload their own photos and videos. Features will also be built into MySpace mobile products.
Citysearch 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.
Both even share the exact same navigation buttons on the bottom: Nearby, Search, and Bookmarks. Only the first button on Citysearch is different. It shows Featured editorial content from Citysearch editors for the city you are in. Yelp opted for a Recent button instead, which Citysearch places on its Bookmarks page.
The two apps are really similar in look and feel (see screenshots above), but under the hood they are different because they are pulling from different databases.
Citysearch is finally coming around to replacing its creaking site design with something a little more contemporary. Today, it is launching in a major rethink of its entire site in beta that drills deeper into neighborhoods, uses Facebook Connect as an optional identity system, and lets users vote reviews up and down. The beta will quickly become the default Citysearch experience. During a demo at IAC headquarters yesterday, Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti told me:
We’ve been working on it for 10 months and built everything from ground up. In Q1 we will be turning off every system that operates Citysearch today, and running everything in the new environment.
Citysearch’s engineers stripped out the decade-old proprietary code that runs Citysearch and replaced it with open-source code. By replacing what’s under the hood, they were freed up to make some major improvements that are immediately apparent. The main changes are:
Los Angeles based law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against Citysearch, accusing it of promoting click fraud. The suit was filed on behalf of plaintiff Tom Lambotte, who has charged that Citysearch has failed to recognize or reimburse him for the clickfraud that took place on an ad he placed between December 11 and 31, 2007. The suit also applies to anyone who has used the click-based Citysearch ad program.
The lawsuit says that Citysearch promotes click fraud by paying its salespeople a commission based on the number of clicks their customers’ ads generate. It also states the Citysearch fails to take any steps to prevent click fraud, and does nothing to help victims.
The plaintiff’s claim is as follows:
“Lambotte’s Citysearch ad received a total of 7 clicks (plus two more that he generated) between December 11 and 25, 2007. On December 26 he received a response from Citysearch to his December 22 request to cancel his ad. Suddenly, his ad began receiving 12 to 16 clicks a day, for a total of 69 clicks between December 26 and December 31, when his ad was finally canceled. He received in these five days 10 times as many clicks as he had received in the previous two weeks. Despite this, Citysearch refused his repeated requests to reverse these charges.”
Basically there was an increase from less than one click per day to around 10 per day. The increase is significant percentage-wise, but the click rate was very low to begin with - any increase would represent a huge gain. On the other hand, if the plaintiff can identify a trend of neglect in Citysearch’s actions, then the class action suit could have some merit.
Kabateck Brown Kellner recently won multi-million dollar settlements involving advertisements on Google and Yahoo, and has recently filed a class-action lawsuit against Google’s AdWords program. With that kind of history it’s clear that the firm knows what it’s doing, but the case might be perceived as just another cash grab.
Yelp, the popular local review site, will soon announce a new $15 million dollar round of financing led by DAG Ventures. The valuation is rumored to be in the $200 million range. Yelp says that they will be using the money to expand geographically, add onto their sales team, and establish an office in NYC (they are based in San Francisco). This is Yelp’s fourth round of funding since their founding in 2004.
Yelp is also boasting some impressive stats: 8.3 million uniques in the past 30 days and over 2.3 million reviews (with the 1 million mark being reached on May 2007) (these are internal Google Analytics stats that the company shared with us). Yelp is in a competitive space with InsiderPages (acquired by Citysearch), and YellowBot. The real competition, though, will eventually be Google Local and Yahoo Local.
With this latest round, DAG joins previous investors Max Levchin ($1 million, Summer 2004), Bessemer Venture Partners ($5 million, Q4 2005), and Benchmark Capital ($10 million, Q4 2006). The company has now raised a total of $31 million. Revenues are rumored to be sub $10 million/year.
The Insider Pages acquisition rumors that we posted on last week were accurate - later today Citysearch, a division of InterActive Corp., will announce that they have acquired the company.
The size of the transaction is not being disclosed, although our understanding from a source close to the deal is that the price is in the $13 million range. The company had previously raised approximately $9 million in venture financing from idealab, Sequoia Capital, and Softbank Capital.
Insider Pages went through a round of heavy layoffs in late 2006 in the face of intense competition from Yelp, Judy’s Book and others. The site has 2 million unique monthly U.S. visitors according to Comscore.
Update: The WSJ is now reporting this as well.
See all
Post
