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.)

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.

Fad

[Moby Cock]

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?

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.

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. :)