Tag Archives: Yelp
Yelp Now Offering Coupons For Mobile Check-Ins
Foursquare was one of the first companies to offer incentives for checking in to venue partners. SCVNGR and Facebook copied off of Foursquare’s business model and now Yelp is jumping on board too. Yelp is now offering business owners “Check-in Offers” to venues.
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Categories Eric Singley, Facebook Places, Foursquare, SCVNGR, Yelp
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Yelp Launches Check-In Deals
Yelp has launched deals for their check-in service. This is similar to what Facebook recently started offering and the business that Foursquare has been working on for a long time now. Now when you check into venues using the Yelp mobile application, you will see coupons and deals.
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Categories Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp
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Yelp Almost Sold To Google Until Yahoo! Made A Counter-Offer [RUMOR]
According to a TechCrunch source, Yelp was in the final stages of selling to Google for $550 million. But then Yahoo! came along and made an offer to buy out Yelp for $750 million. Yelp had their investment bank ask Google if they wanted to match Yahoo!
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Categories Google, Yahoo!, Yelp
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Yelp Is Starting To Work With Local Businesses For Yelp Deals
Yelp’s core service is reviews that people leave about local businesses. Local businesses with the best reviews on Yelp tend to have higher revenues as well. Now local businesses are starting to offer Yelp-only deals for customers. “Historically, we have provided value to our 36 million monthly unique visitors by helping them find a great local business when they need a product or service,” stated Yelp’s Director of Local Business Marketing. “As you will see today in San Diego, and soon in other cities, we have been working with some of the best local businesses — as identified by the Yelp community — to highlight some great deals for our users.” [Yelp Blog]
Categories Yelp, Yelp Deals
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New Yelp iPhone App To Have Virtual Badges
The new Yelp iPhone application is going to compete with Foursquare head-on. According to a company blog post, Yelp will have virtual badges and a royalty hierarchy similar to the Mayor concept on Foursquare too. Yelp hierarchy includes the Duke, Duchess, Baron, and King of specific venues. Yelp submitted this version of the app for approval recently. [Yelp Blog via Mashable]
Categories Foursquare, Yelp
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Yelp Integrating OpenTable Into Restaurant Profiles
Yelp is integrating OpenTable’s reservation system into restaurant profiles. The OpenTable reservation can only be viewed by registered users viewing participating restaurants. OpenTable currently works with about 11,000 restaurants.
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Categories OpenTable, Yelp
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Yelp Tweaks User Interface Due To Controversy
Yelp has announced some major changes to their services. Yelp will now allow anyone to view reviews that were previously hidden by the automated filter. Yelp is also getting rid of the “Favorite Review” feature that is being sold to advertisers.
Yelp’s automated filter was created to prevent showing fake or malicious reviews. However the automated filter also caused legitimate reviews to be hidden. Yelp’s favorite review feature was sold by Yelp to establishments to showcase what people like best about them.
“Today we’ve taken steps to make it even more clear that Yelp treats review content equally for advertisers and non-advertisers alike and that there is no relationship between advertising and a business’ reviews on Yelp,” stated Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman. “While Yelp is helping millions of consumers find millions of great local businesses each month–and consumer traffic and business advertisers continue to reach new highs–myths have persisted about how review content is displayed on Yelp.” [CNET]
Categories Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
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Yelp Makes A Video That Explains Review Filtering Process [VIDEO]
Yelp and Epipheo Studios worked together on a video that explains how the filtering process works. Yelp has a reputation to protect as they are facing lawsuits that involve extortion. Below is a video of how it works:
Categories Epipheo Studios, Yelp
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Yelp Getting Sued For Extortion
It wasn’t too long ago that Yelp was mulling an offer from Google, but opted to raise additional funding instead. About a year ago, a business owner claimed that he was being blackmailed by Yelp too. Now Yelp is facing a class action lawsuit addressing an extortion complaint. The complaint was filed in Los Angeles by Miami-based law firm Beck & Lee and San Diego-based law firm The Weston Firm. The plaintiff is a Long Beach, California based veterinary hospital. The hospital claims that Yelp only offered to remove the negative review for $300. [PEHub]
Yelp Supposedly Turned Down Google’s Acquisition Offer Of $550 Million
Earlier this month, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was rumored to be making an acquisition deal with Yelp.com. Google was willing to pay about $550 million, but now there are reports surfacing that Yelp has turned down the acquisition offer. This is surprising considering that Yelp has a reputation for bullying local businesses over negative reviews.
Yelp raised a total of $31 million from VC firms and is going to earn roughly $30-$50 million in revenue this year. This places the company at a valuation of $200 million, another reason why turning down $550 million from Google seems like an illogical move.
Why would Yelp turn Google down? Clearly Yelp believes that they could grow at a faster pace as an independent company. If the company made roughly $50 million in 2009, then I would not be surprised if they make at least $75 million in 2010.