Yelp App Users Can Now Add Video to Reviews

An update to the Yelp iPhone app now enables users to add 3-12 second videos of their favorite or out-of-favor restaurants, attractions, and other businesses.

Yelp iPhone app users have long been able to add photos of the whiskey cake or dumplings set on their dinner tables, but now they can tap “photo or video,” start their videos, preview them and add comments before posting them for other diners or potential diners to view.

While videoing the real ambience of the restaurant or its cuisine may indeed help users make better-informed choices about their next dining reservation, some fellow diners may view this encouragement of taking video during lunch or dinner as yet another privacy invasion.

If some Google Glass users have been subject to “Glasshole” taunts for allegedly videoing people who haven’t signed off on being part of that particular escapade or being wearable technology collateral damage, some diners or restaurant employees may not find the new video feature in the Yelp app particularly appetizing, either.

Still, if previously a restaurant customer would have to be content with writing a review of the rude server or the mouse scampering across the bar, now the Yelp iPhone app users will be able to record the outrages through 3-12 second video clips.

Some 67.9 million unique visitors per month use the Yelp mobile site and its apps, according to the company’s latest citation.

Users of Yelp’s Android apps can’t play videographer yet, though, as the video feature is not yet available in the Yelp app on Google Play.