Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

Yelp Files For IPO To Raise $100 Million

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 18 -  Local recommendation site Yelp has finally filed an S-1 to IPO, wanting to raise $100M. The site generated $58.4M net revenue in the first nine months of 2011, 80% growth over the same period in 2010. It operated at a net loss however, of $7.6M. Revenues have grown pretty fast, from $12.1M in 2008 to $47.7M in 2010 but it is still not profitable.

by Alexia Tsotsis
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Groupon, Yelp Sued Over Mobile Commerce Patent

MOCONEWS - Nov 8 - The patent in question is owned by a subsidiary of Hothand, a firm that gained attention in 2009 by offering advertisers a way to send messages to students on their mobile phones. The company received the patent in 2010 and has already used it to sue Foursquare. The new lawsuit says that Groupon’s apps for the iPhone and iPad violate the patent as do its Android, Windows and BlackBerry apps. The patent abstract describes it as: A subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants.

by Jeff Roberts
See full article at MocoNews

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This post also appears on DailyDealsObserver.

Lawsuits Alleging Extortion Over Yelp’s Review System Dismissed

TECH CRUNCH - Oct 27 - Last year, several lawsuits emerged that accused Yelp of extorting businesses to advertise in exchange for positive reviews. A judge granted Yelp’s request to dismiss these suits. As CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman writes “our automated system applies the same objective criteria to all reviews regardless of a business’s advertiser status.

by Leena Rao
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Yelp Now Has 20 Million Reviews Under Its Belt

TECH CRUNCH - July 15 - Yelp crossed 20M reviews, up from 10M in March, 2010 (and 17M last April). Yelp hit 53M visitors in June, according to its own stats. It took about 6 years for Yelp to get to 20M reviews. 

by Erick Schonfeld
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Yelp Launches In Spain As International Traffic Doubles

TECH CRUNCH - May 11 - Yelp has launched its fifth non-English international site, Spain, which joins France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. International traffic to these sites has doubled over the past year. According to ComScore, Yelp now has 50 million unique visitors per month, mostly in the US, with an 87% growth in non-US unique visitors in the last year. Yelp now hosts 18 million customer reviews, and boasts 4 million mobile users.

by Erick Schonfeld
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Yelp Poised For IPO

MASHABLE – Apr 27 - Instead of seeking another round of financing, Yelp is considering an IPO. The crowdsourced local review site has not yet started the filing process, but it recently began searching for a CFO with IPO qualifications. Yelp accepted a $25M investment from Elevation Partners in January 2010 to expand its mobile app presence and roll out new check-in features.

by Sarah Kessler
See full article at Mashable

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Yelp Now Drawing 50 Million Users A Month

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 5 - Yelp, which has been focused on local since 2004, is still growing at a clip pace. Today the company has surpassed 50M monthly unique users, up from 46M the month before. And they have a total of 17M reviews for venues around the world. In Q1, users wrote 2M reviews, while most quarters average 1M.

by Jason Kincaid
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Yelp Deals Launch In San Diego, More Cities Coming Soon

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 26 - Last month we reported on a new experiment Yelp was running that put it in competition with the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial: time-sensitive daily deals, offering steep discounts at local businesses that users can pre-purchase. Today, Yelp is making things a bit more official: it’s now offering local deals in San Diego, with plans to expand to San Francisco, New York, and other cities in the near future. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Gears Up To Take On Groupon, Starts Testing Local Deals

TECH CRUNCH - July 26 - It looks like Yelp is looking to cash in on the local deal craze. Yelp has recently been testing time-limited local deals in a select number of pilot cities. The feature would obviously compete with Groupon and a throng of other deal sites, though it isn’t clear if Yelp is testing a group-buying mechanic or if it’s simply offering deals for a limited period of time.  Yelp has sent this statement: Yes we ran a short test in Sacramento. We’re always testing new things and if our users respond positively to deals from great businesses of course we’ll deliver that. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp’s Android App Approaching One Million Downloads

TECH CRUNCH - July 16 - Yelp has one of the most popular apps on the iPhone, but its Android app is catching on too. Launched last December, the app is approaching one million downloads. The number of active users is growing 50% week over week, according to Yelp. Across all mobile phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Android), Yelp has 2.5M active users a month. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Says It's Not Afraid Of Foursquare

READ WRITE WEB - Jun 28 - Location based social network Foursquare is the darling of the media's eye these days and appears to be growing very fast. Is old-school local social network Yelp scared? No, says Eric Singley, Yelp's Director of Consumer and Mobile Products. Singley told us he finds Foursquare's user numbers "hard to quantify" and said "they don't blow my mind." Foursquare may be fun, he says, but Yelp remains the best place to find good restaurants and bars to patronize. Yelp is also much bigger than Foursquare. Tonight the company is making a number of mobile announcements. Local businesses that have created free accounts and claimed their listings on Yelp will receive additional analytics specific to mobile user traffic: the number of times they've shown up in mobile search, the number of times mobile users have clicked to call them by telephone and the number of times users have clicked for directions to their business. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Yelp Security Hole Puts Facebook User Data At Risk

TECH CRUNCH - May 11 - As if Facebook’s Instant Personalization needed another knock against it, tonight comes news of a security issue that makes the feature even more unnerving. Web security consultant George Deglin discovered an exploit that would allow a malicious site to immediately harvest a Facebook user’s name, email, and data shared with ‘everyone’ on Facebook, with no action required on the user’s part. This specific exploit has been patched, and no user data was compromised, but the security problems behind it remain. The exploit took advantage of Cross Site Scripting to inject malicious code into Yelp. Yelp is one of the three sites that have been deemed fit for Facebook’s highly controversial Instant Personalization feature. The feature grants Yelp immediate access to much of a user’s core Facebook data as soon as they visit the reviews site, without having to bother with logins or Connect buttons. But with that convenience comes risk — if a site with Instant Personalization is compromised, it can put almost any Facebook user in harm’s way. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Now Available In French

MASHABLE - May 6 - Local reviews service Yelp has launched its first non-English version: French, which debuted this afternoon in France. The French version is available at Yelp.fr, though the service will also let users in other Yelp cities flip the service from English to French if they so choose. Yelp currently sees more than 25M unique visitors per month, though the bulk of that traffic comes from the US. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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Complaints Against Yelp’s “Extortion” Practices Grow Louder

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 17 - Yelp has been hit with another lawsuit, the third in a matter of a few weeks. This lawsuit filed by Boris Levitt, the owner of Renaissance Furniture Restoration in San Francisco, claims that Yelp’s “unfair and unethical conduct in promoting, marketing and advertising its website as maintaining unbiased reviews” is unlawful and hurt his business. Levitt’s suit is similar to the previous claims that Yelp is extorting businesses for advertising. Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman has explicitly denied that they ever offered preferential treatment in exchange for money. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Hit With Second Extortion Lawsuit

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 4 - Last week, we reported on a class-action lawsuit filed in LA alleging that Yelp was running an “extortion scheme”. Today, the company has just gotten slapped by a second, similar suit, this time coming from the D’ames Day Spa of San Diego County, which is accusing Yelp of removing many positive reviews because the spa declined to run ads on the site. The suit claims that Yelp removed 13 out of 14 positive reviews about the Day Spa. But Stoppelman writes that the Spa has admitted that it solicited the reviews in question, which the site has repeatedly instructed businesses not to do. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Elevation To Invest $100 Million In Yelp

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 27 - Elevation will invest as much as $100M in Yelp. For now, Yelp will be raising a $25M in a Series E round from the firm. Elevation co-founder Marc Bodnick will be joining Yelp’s Board of Directors. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Taking Big Investment From Elevation Partners

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 18 - Yelp is closing a fifth round of financing from Elevation Partners. The size of the rounds is in the $50M range, but includes both a primary investment component as well as a secondary offering for long time employees. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 20 - Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars. The deal was in the later stages of negotiation. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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