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Search By.... Email?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i'm-adding-a-mail-filter-right-now dept.

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."

2 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds kinda nifty by darth_MALL · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Screw this. by sketerpot · · Score: 4, Informative
    If the friend emails me directly and asks nicely, sure, I'd help out that friend. But if the friend spams lots of people with form letters asking stuff and linking to this site, I will get annoyed. This is just an intermediary for spamming with some self-promotion mixed in, and spammers should not be cooperated with.

    Anyway, this site looks like it was concieved and implemented by people who learned all their skills reading "HTML and Perl for Dummies" back in 1999. It won't last unless I've overestimated the intelligence of the average internet user.