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."

Comments

Finally!

[drgreg911]

It's about time somebody saved me the hassle of having to hit that CC button, my efficiency is going to skyrocket now.

But...

[MastaBaba]

how how can it be abused by the sex industry?

Re:But...

[jonathan z]

That's easy! You can have your network of (skeezy) friends rate all the local prostitutes for you; based on the well-known formula: (Sexual Skills)*(Attractiveness)/(Price)*(Number of STDs)=(Hookosity Index) (The higher the rating, the more preferable the hooker.)

"Yacking"

[fiannaFailMan]

The Internet, it turns out, is mainly about searching and yacking.

Where I come from, 'yacking' is standing around and gossiping. What does it mean in this context? I couldn't figure it out from TFA.

Re:"Yacking"

[Trolling4Columbine]

Yacking is what I do after spicy nachos and a twelve-pack of beer.

Re:Not sure,

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is "the early 2000's" ?

question

[scaaven]

Question for yelp: "How can I help stop spam?"

Answer: your friends don't know, so the question is forwarded to everyone on Earth.

Re:Not sure,

[Orgazmus]

The early naughties ;)

Spam blacklists...

[Zocalo]

Call me a sceptic if you want, but I think that this "service" is going to get blacklisted by the DNSBLs etc so fast it's untrue:

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. :)

Re:Spam blacklists...

[savagedome]

yelp.com ERROR:"554 Use Google, you dumb fsck!"

Or you can be polite and point them here

Re:Not sure,

[jalefkowit]

As opposed to a sober and sensible name like YELP?

Re:Screw this.

[JohnGrahamCumming]

I tested Yelp! out with my own email address and POPFile classified each Yelp! message as spam.

I don't see any reason to change POPFile's thinking on the subject :-)

John.

Re:Frank wants to know about Volvo repair.

[kkovach]

But Zak already knows about legos. He's a maniac for that stuff!

- Kevin

Re:Is "Tell a Friend" spamming the friend?

[LiquidCoooled]

Technically, a gmail invite falls into this criteria.

More often though, with less reputable companies, you will get 5 or 10 variations over the course of a few days/weeks/months because one person gave your address.

"Jane signed you up for xyz"
"Hey, Jane signed you up"
"Cooooooey, Jane wants a word"
"Jane is getting lonely"
"Jane is leaving town"
"Last chance, Jane is going"
"You'll never see Jane again"
"..."
"Janes Back!!!"
"Welcome back party for Jane"

Re:Sounds kinda nifty

[AvitarX]

So it will degenerate into ask slashdot?

Re:Fad

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can have not only your friends asking you stupid question, you can have THEIR friends asking you stupid questions, and their friends' friends, and their friends's friends' friends, and so on.

Yeah, but after 6 iterations, you'll have Kevin Bacon asking you stupid questions.

Artists out there...?

[julesh]

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".

Formula correction...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.