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

Screw this.

[sketerpot]

If you email me and a bunch of other people asking some stupid question that you want me to go to a search engine and answer, I'm going to block email from you. Do not spam me. This is the worst search engine idea ever. Die die die.

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.

Re:Screw this.

[lukewarmfusion]

I completely agree. This is on par with people who send me all their email forwards. I will be as rude as necessary to get the point across that I don't appreciate crap in my email inbox.

I, too, am happy to help a friend out when they ask for recommendations on a restaurant or whatever. But if they ask for the recommendation and end their email with "btw, I gave your email address to a few spammers before I sent this to you" then I will be very angry.

Re:Screw this.

[Babbster]

The thing that bothers me most about the system, though, is the eventual anonymity of the requests. My understanding is that if it takes off, you won't just be getting e-mails from your friends, but from a friend of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance. I don't know about anyone else, but if I wanted to be Ask Jeeves, I'd change my friggin' name.

Ads from my friends?

[tonsofpcs]

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....

I have to deal with this daily already :(

[VE3ECM]

Do you and I *really* need a service where our annoying friends can spam us all day long asking us where to find the best pastrami on rye in town?

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.

Spammers collection point?

[DigitalNinja7]

This just screams "give me valid email addresses so I can sell them to spammers!" This service is retarded, just use your email client.

Maybe I'm mising something...

[Shadow Wrought]

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?

Re:Fad

[eln]

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.

This sounds like a really dumb idea. I don't mind answering the occasional question for someone I actually know and like, but this thing sounds like asking me to play tech support (or google) for a bunch of people my friends know, but I may not know, or even worse may know but not like.

This is a solution without a problem. Finding most information on the net can be done much faster, more accurately, and with no chance of pissing off some random friend of a friend of a friend, with an ordinary search engine.

Re:Sounds kinda nifty

[LostCluster]

It will probably become quite effective once the useage gets high.

That usage factor is going to be very interesting, because in order for their system to works there needs to be an answer to every question asked, and to work well many answers per question.

But where exactly are the answers going to come from since there's no direction reward for answering? There needs to be some sort of rule or incentive protecting the question-to-answer ratio, otherwise this system could colapse with piles of unanswered questions.

My friends are far away

[JohnGrahamCumming]

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.

Frank wants to know about Volvo repair.

[khasim]

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.

Re:Will you annoy your friends by doing this?

[kenf]

If I thought my friends knew the answer to my question I would have already emailed/phoned them directly. I don't think I need a third party to yelp at them, and otherwise annoy them.

Unintelligible

[BarryNorton]

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.)

So...

[dfj225]

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?