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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?
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?
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
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.
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!
But Zak already knows about legos. He's a maniac for that stuff!
- Kevin
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
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".
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.
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)