Articles tagged “yelp”

As the Boston Consulting Group-Facebook study points out, companies such as Delta and Hipmunk, which lag their peers in desktop traffic, can make up a lot of ground in mobile. Hey, it's a whole new ballgame.

Kudos to the European Union for ensuring that Google doesn't wield its market power with excessive advantage in promoting its own services. The U.S. FTC's decision to avoid taking similar actions is a regulatory blemish, although the EU agreement could put more pressure on the FTC to take another look at these issues.

As Google and a crop of smaller startups attempt to crowdsource local reviews and recommendations, Yelp's legacy and continued growth keep it ahead of the curve. But that might not be enough for shareholders who want to see profits more than potential.

Many reputation management firms have made a living out of criticizing Yelp and TripAdvisor, and some of them have crossed the line and gotten into the fake-review writing business themselves. There are reputation management firms with integrity out there, but these 19 companies are not among them.

Lists like this are always about buzz rather than reality, so watchers will have to wait until these six reach their forties to see if they can turn their young-ish companies into established players.

Like TripAdvisor, Yelp has a major headstart in restaurant and other local business reviews, and that should be a big plus in its competition with the likes of Facebook, TripAdvisor and European restaurant review sites. Will mobile advertising resonate with Yelp's users? The jury is out on that.

Yelp promises that Nearby is “just the beginning” as it goes head-on with Foursquare to offer mobile location-based searches that are useful to travelers in most major global cities.

Yelp indeed has stubborn problems, and long-term trends aren't in its favor. Still, as a first-mover, its content can't easily be duplicated.

Yelp upped its marketing to entice local advertisers to ante up. Relatively few are advertising, which is either a huge opportunity for Yelp, or a sign of its shortcomings.

Although Facebook knows what you and your friends like, so far its local product suffers from a lack of quality, actionable information.