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Search By.... Email?
cjjjer writes "The Register has a article on Yelp, the newest local search engine based on your local friends and businesses. Robert X. Cringely over at I, Cringely has another take on this new type of service as well. Seems to me a service like this will only generate a lot of useless emails that will go un-answered. Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like spam."
but wasn't this an idea of IBM's in the early 2000's ?
I registered at Yelp to see what it is like. You can enter recommendations directly which is pretty cool. If you ask a question it has to go to your list of friends, which may annoy them for all I know. I do not see a way to look at the list of recommended businesses in my town. I apparently have to ask first. I think it would be neat to print out a list of all businesses in my town that have been recommended. It may be too inclusive a list but I bet it would chop off the bad ones at a minimum.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Here's the breakdown FTA:
"Suppose you want to find where you can drink the most romantic Mint Julep in town, or where to find the cheapest key cutter. You enter your request into Yelp, then nominate some friends who you know can be trusted not to jerk you around, or who really know a good tip. This much you might have already done, for sure, without Yelp! but like Evite, Yelp! takes care of the rest of the business. If your friends can't come up with the answer, it will then tentatively try friends of friends. Yelp! takes care of mis-spellings, and plugs into a directory at the back end, giving you an address and a map. And, overtime, becomes an authoritative information source."
It will probably become quite effective once the useage gets high. Sign me up.
It's about time somebody saved me the hassle of having to hit that CC button, my efficiency is going to skyrocket now.
how how can it be abused by the sex industry?
Try, just try to do something without bugging another sentient.
With the cyberthalamus, the singularity will happen.
And their page uses really sucky JavaScript; have they ever heard of using plain old hyperlinks rather than using javascript to open a popup window? It would make their site much more friendly to---irony coming---search engines. Real search engines.
This seems to me to be one of those fad type things. It'll never last. The first time you get a Yelp request it may seem interesting or cool. Then after a few more, you'll be sick to death of them and never answer the things.
The great thing about google local is that it's all automated and immediate. This Yelp is going to be lagged which could be a real pain in the ass.
The other thing is, why would you need Yelp! to ask your friends to recommend a restaurant or tailor or whatever. If they are your friends, why not just ask them to their face?
This system brings up an interesting e-mail marketing situation.
When a site invites its user to "tell a friend" by sending a pre-scripted e-mail, the friend ends up getting an e-mail that looks a lot like a spam message, but it's not really a mass-distributed e-mail because it only goes to those whose e-mail addresses were turned in by other friends.
So, the sending friend might think they're doing their friend a favor, while the friend getting the message would be within their rights to declare that they were spammed...
So I get ads from my friends, and only my friends, so If I'm looking for a new place to do something, tough luck? Seems kinda odd....
Video Production Support
Or the best dry cleaner?
Or whatever...
There's always going to be someone who uses Yelp! 10 times a day and annoys you to no end.
It happens already: go take a look in any live journal community.
This just screams "give me valid email addresses so I can sell them to spammers!" This service is retarded, just use your email client.
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But if I want to ask all my friends a question, why can't I just send a group e-mail? If I need a recommendation, why wouldn't I just go to one of the myriad of review websites out there? I realize that a lot of successful businesses started by scratching an itch you didn't know you had, but I don't think there is going to be a particular demand for this one. If people are already capable of easily answering these questions, where is the incentive to change?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
That's the sound that any of my friends will make as I beat the living snot out of them if they start sending me stupid emails.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I had a friend in high school whose middle name was X. That was it, a single letter name. I have heard of this in other cases as well.
http://www.busyweather.com/
actually, he doesn't, but nice troll anyways
Answer: your friends don't know, so the question is forwarded to everyone on Earth.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
GO LINUX!
I don't know about Linix. I am more of an AOL person. I find the interface easier to navigate the Internet Explorer.
Here's my problem with Yelp! from a local search perspective. Most of the "friends" that I email with are nowhere near me, the people who are I actually talk to in person or on the phone.
Emailing my circle of friends in the UK, Japan, Germany, etc. isn't going to get me a good recommendation on a New York dry cleaners.
John.
So I can ruthlessly mutilate the brain cells I wasted on this article. Is it just me or was that article written with so much energy that it reminds you of Tom Sawyer trying to get people to white wash a fence? *bangs head* minutes of my time was wasted on this, people. Minutes!! It reminds me of why I *hate* "critical thinking" in the social sciences.
According to babycenter.com some popular X names are:
1. Xanthus
2. Xavier
3. Xerxes
I was also curious...and these are just the boys names.
Alice wants to know about hair stylists. ...
Bob wants to know about fishing sites.
Charlie wants to know about CD's.
Dave wants to know about guitars.
Ethel wants to know about concerts.
Frank wants to know about Volvo repairs.
Gary wants to know about Vegas.
Heidi wants to know about gyms.
Zak wants to know about legos.
And that's just on Monday.
U nsolicited? Check!
C ommericial? Check!
E mail? Check!
That spells "spam" in my book. I think I'll just add an entry to my SMTP access list now, and get it over with:
yelp.com ERROR:"554 Use Google, you dumb fsck!"
That should do it. :)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
heh..
I am not at all worried about this.. mark it as spam in yahoo and gmail, mark it as spam in my filters..
then it will just be another junk mailer with a few people who might use it.
not to mention that yahoo and gmail also happen to be major search engines I doubt I will ever seen one land in an inbox of those web-based accounts.
next...
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
http://www.capescience.com/google/index.shtml is doing this for long time.
Very effective if there is no browser handy.
Hanging meat lasts longer !
It's a cute idea, but it's going to be abused really quickly.
If there's ANY regularity to the message formats, look for the spammers to adopt it.
Also, can you think of a better way to collect real email address than by sending out crap and collecting the "on vacation" bounces?
"For a good time, call ###-####"
Freedom: "I won't!"
isnt this like craigslist type sites only without the friendly, relaxed online, nospam good things about it?
liqbase
Send a few to your ex (or your spouse), asking where the best place is to get laid...
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
me: Hey Yelp, how do I cut down on stupid Yelp email traffic?
Yelp: I don't know, sorry.
We can't stop them! They meme business, err, I mean "mean".
It's only a model.
Now imagine responding to a zillion such mails from friends of friends of friends....
enjoy your sanity while it lasts.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
what stops someone from getting a bunch of questions and spamming the people that emailed them asking for help? If they emailed you first its not unsolicited.
Having "Xanthus" or "Xerxes" for a name is a good way to get a serious ass kicking every day at school.
It's not his real name! The guy's name is Mark Stephens.
There must be somebody here who can do a reasonable imitation of the style of artwork they've got on that front page. I want to see the conclusion to that storyboard. Preferably involving a long, heavy wooden pole labelled "cluestick".
Man, did they ever miss the boat.
... 'cause you KNOW that all the answers given here are both accurate and intelligent.
... WHERE ARE YOU?
In fact, they were at the bus station waiting for a train.
All they really needed to do was to index each and every Slashdot entry ever made
Professor Irwin Cory (the self-professed world's foremost expert on everything)
Here's my advice: Move the communication mechanism from the inbox to somewhere else ... perhaps a tab in an instant messaging app, or perhaps a stand-alone tray app itself. Yelp messages showing up in your inbox will be resented ... but if an icon were to show up in my taskbar, I might consider clicking on it to see what a friend needs. Bottom line, I want to respond to "Yelps" on my schedule ... not on theirs ... and a message at the top of my inbox is too intrusive for me to find the service appealing.
But they won't read mail from Yelp. I've already told Plaxo never to approach me again. Yelp! is even worse.
...is Slashdot just going to bite the bullet and make a Cringely icon?
I suppose it's perfectly in keeping with the terribly-written article on The Register that we're offered snide opinion on something here without having even been told what it is. (And worse, misled that this is some kind of search engine.)
The perfect sociological solution, from the spammer's view, to the address collection problem. Sure, the internet user hides his or her email address. Sure, they put on all kinds of technical blocks. Sure, they're wary and won't stupidly write their email address into any form that asks for it.
But they will give their email address to their mom, and their mom WILL type it into that form.
"Yelp! will not share email addresses with third parties" they claim.
Interestingly, sharing email addresses with a third party (them) is exactly what every Yelp! user will be required to do for this system to work. Obviously this policy of non-disclosure isn't motivated by any concern for the privacy of the individuals behind those addresses. More likely, they are concerned about their investment in a proprietary social networking database. "Tell us who your friends are, and we will profit from it."
Besides, I actually care more about how much e-mail I get, than how many get to see my e-mail address. Yelp! seems bent on sending me e-mail without disclosing my address to others, as if that would make me any happier?
Maybe I should obtain an e-mail address long enough to be covered by copyright and prohibit people from sharing it with services like Yelp! without my explicit permission. A service like this could work on a strict opt-in basis, but then it might not be as easy to market. Without opt-in, Yelp! will quickly find their mail servers blacklisted.
Worste idea... ever!!!
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Shouldn't that be (Sexual Skills)*(Attractiveness)/(Price)^(Number of STDs)=(Hookosity Index)? I'd think that the more STDs, the much much lower the rating should be.
Unless you're Persian then Xerxes makes some sense.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
I own a number of domains, and all the email addresses point to my inbox, after being run by the trained bayesian spam filter I wrote. I just tried Yelp, listing some of my aliases as friends, and the emails went straight into my spam directory. So I suppose most people with bayesian filters will never see a Yelp message (unless they have whitelists). I am happy I will never see one again.
...that these replies would all be ad free...
Yeah, right!
yet another way for my friends to sign me up for spam, like those stupid e-cards or birthday reminders. Just enter your friends and well send them an email about this... along with viagra ads. It's so rude to put anyone else's email into a website (other than webmail I suppose)
So of course all Apple fans need to know....
Did he pronounce it "ex" or "ten"?
I suspect that most ISPs will get enough complaints from their customers that Yelp will simply be classified as spam. Oh well - if you can't find it on Google, what makes you think Yelp can do better?
What makes this something that I couldn't do with email sent the old-fashioned way(or a cell phone) and local.google.com, map quest, or some other service?
SIGFAULT
Correction
:(
{(Sexual Skills)*(Attractiveness)}/{(Price)*(Price of Medicine)^(Number of STDs)}
According to your formula if the hooker has no STDs, the Price is to the power of 0, and anything to the power of 0 = 1, meaning there is no deteriment, and price is no longer a factor.
Therefore if you insert the Price of the medicine you'll need to buy to control your herpes or crabs, etc, then it is amplified by the number of STDs you get.
Damn I'm SMRT! I should have got a Math degree instead of Human Bio...
Live forever, or die trying.
Umm... my formula doesn't make sense... *sigh*, they were probably right when they did not grant me a math degree. :(
Live forever, or die trying.
Didn't he steal the pen name from eWeek?
dude, they ALL have STDs
Read jack phelps dot net
Subject: Proximity Search
Are you near me? I'm parked at 1st and Elm in Springfield.