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

Google Really Purchases Yelp

ECOMMERCE - Dec 18 - Many sources confirm that Google is in advanced talks with Yelp over the acquisition deal which is likely to close soon. The transaction price will be at least half a million dollars. Over 25M people access Yelp's website each month, putting it in the top 100 of U.S. web sites. The revenue of the company are expected ~$30M in 2009 and $50M or so in 2010. FULL ARTICLE @ ECOMMERCE JOURNAL

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Yelp Is Growing 80% A Year, While Citysearch Remains Flat

TECH CRUNCH -- Sep 2 -- In July, Yelp had 8.6M unique U.S. visitors, up 80% from a year ago. Citysearch, on the other hand, had zero growth, staying at 15.4M uniques.(comScore). Yelp also has the No. 1 travel app on the iPhone (it is No. 26 overall). Whereas Citysearch’s similar iPhone app is not even in the top 20 travel apps. Yelp’s pageviews and average time spent per user on the site are also up 150% and 22%, respectively. Kara Nortman, the executive who runs Citysearch, says that the pageview numbers are down slightly. Part of this has to do with Citysearch going through the site and “pulling out pages that are not great consumer experiences,” which hurts SEO, but improves the site overall. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp’s New iPhone App Hits The App Store

TECH CRUNCH -- Apr 15 -- Yelp’s version 2.0 of its iPhone app has officially hit Apple’s App store. The new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its exiting GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write reviews directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Businesses May Respond To Reviews On Yelp

CNET NEWS -- Apr 9 -- Yelp is set to roll out a new feature that will allow business owners to respond to user reviews--both good and bad--of their establishments. Businesses that want to take part in the program must register with Yelp. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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Yelp And The Business Of Extortion 2.0

EAST BAY EXPRESS -- Feb 18 -- Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site for a price - $299 a month. Several business owners likened Yelp to the Mafia, and one said she feared its retaliation. "Every time I had a sales person call me and I said, 'Sorry, it doesn't make sense for me to do this,' ... then all of a sudden reviews start disappearing." Such tactics may be legal, but they clearly raise ethical concerns. Yelp draws more than 16m unique visitors. More than 4.5m reviews have been written so far, and the company has raised $31m in funding to date. FULL ARTICLE @ EAST BAY EXPRESS

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Yelp Jumps Across The Pond

CNET NEWS -- Jan 8 -- User-generated business reviews site Yelp has officially launched a U.K. edition. The company raised a fresh $15m in funding early last year. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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Yelp.com Offers To Play Up Positive Comments

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT -- Nov 17 -- Yelp lets people share their reviews about businesses and has become a popular search tool to find shops and services. Yelp has launched an aggressive telemarketing effort to get more advertisers on its site. Condra Easley, co-owner of Patisserie Angelica, said she was told that for $300 a month she could rearrange the reviews about her pastry shop so the bad ones would drop to the bottom. But businesses cannot pay to rearrange reviews, according to Yelp's Web site. Yet other owners have said they were told the same thing by Yelp's telemarketers. FULL ARTICLE @ THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

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Loopt Brings Yelp Reviews To 3G iPhone

READ WRITE WEB -- July 10 --  The iPhone App Store has just gone live and one of the apps getting early attention is Loopt, a location aware mobile social network startup we profiled in June. Their latest release for the iPhone integrates microblogging and reviews from Yelp into its interface. In addition, Loopt aggregates local content to provide a map view of great places and star ratings. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Angry Businesses Organize Anti-Yelp Websites

TECH CRUNCH -- July 2 -- Yelp offers user reviews of local businesses. When Yelp released their API in August 2007, they were doing pretty well, getting 1.4m U.S. visitors and 6m page views per month. They've seen rapid growth since, now at almost 15m U.S. visitors per month, surpassing competitor CitySearch in March (Compete.com). Sites like Yelp-Sucks and IHateYelp have been popping up, with the general theme being an angry business owner who was Yelped. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Yelp Plans To Go Mobile

CNET NEWS -- June 4 --  Business reviews site Yelp will be focusing quite a bit on mobile features in the near future, including an upcoming location-aware iPhone app on the way. iPhone users will be able to log onto the Yelp application and search for businesses and reviews of establishments close to their geographic coordinates. The company has not said whether it will expand location-aware mobile services to devices beyond the iPhone, but Apple's handset is a logical starting point. FULL ARTICLE @ SOCIAL NETWORKING WATCH

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Facebook Mini-feeds Get Hungrier

CNET NEWS -- Apr 15 -- Facebook members now have the options to import their activity from a number of external social-media sites into the "Mini-Feeds" on their profiles. Currently, this is limited to business reviews site Yelp, bookmarking site Delicious, photo-sharing sites Flickr and Picasa. More are on the way, including Digg. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

Yelp Raises $15 Million Fourth Round

TECH CRUNCH -- Feb 26 -- Yelp, the popular local review site, will soon announce a new $15 million dollar round of financing led by DAG Ventures. The valuation is rumored to be in the $200 million range. This is Yelp's fourth round of funding since their founding in 2004. Yelp is also boasting some impressive stats: 8.3 million uniques in the past 30 days and over 2.3 million reviews. Yelp is in a competitive space with InsiderPages (acquired by Citysearch), and YellowBot. The real competition, though, will eventually be Google Local and Yahoo Local. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

About Social Networking

CHIBUS -- Jan 25 -- Wikipedia says the first social networking site was Classmates.com, started in 1995. Merill Lynch forecasts social networking sites will receive $1.1 billion this year ($2.8 billion by 2010). Yelp and MingleNow  are centered around bars and restaurants. Meetup extends the idea to everything from movies to politics. Meetro connects you with those nearby. Mobile social networking is supposed to take off (it's been supposed to take off for like two years now) with companies like Dodgeball. This month Piczo raised $11m. MomJunction raised $1.5 m. Meebo, the web-based IM tool, raised $9m in a Series B funding. Yahoo picked up MyBlogLog for ~$10m, and Wetpaint is ~$9m richer. FULL ARTICLE @ CHIBUS

Yelp.com Friendly Referrals

TECHCRUNCH BLOG -- Oct 5 -- Yelp (1,5 million uniques/mo) took $10 million in Series B funding from Benchmark. Yelp specializes in local reviews and competes with Judy's Book which raised $8 million from Mobius, Ignition and Ackerley last year. FULL ARTICLE @ TECHCRUNCH BLOG

Mark Brooks: Yahoo is moving differentiating itself from Google by focusing on social search. Sites like Yelp and Judy's Book are trying to bottle the 'friendly referral' in essence. Online dating services such as Engage, and GreatBoyfriends are also trying to provide 'friendly referrals.' Successful unisons between internet dating sites and social networking are non-existent. Connectors won't connect when there is a real and apparent commercial agenda, which is why sites like Yub.com and FriendFinder's internet dating meets social networking (Q3/Q4 2003) services never took off. The best internet dating sites can hope for is getting feedback/testimonials from other users.