Archive for yelp
Amy’s Bakery Meltdown: Yelp Is Broken and Social Flashmobs Apparently Rule
Yelp may not be the go-to source for restaurant reviews. Why? Amy's Baking Company has 1131 reviews, 99.9% of which are snarky, mean, negative “reviews.” How many of those 1131 reviewers actually ate at the restaurant and how many just piled on for flash mob social media bashing? 99.9%
Category: Amy's Bakery, Amy's Baking Company, Behavior, Best Practices, community, Community Management, CRM, customer service, Engagement, Reviews, yelp, Yes /
Foursquare Adds Yelp-Like Filters to Website
Foursquare is adding more functionality to its local search features by allowing users to limit their searches to businesses within a certain price range or to those that are open at the time.
Users can also search for venues offering specials for those who check in on Foursquare. Those businesses appear at the top of an unfiltered search as well, pushing users to continue to take advantage of the check-in feature that provides the data for the rest of Foursquare’s local search features.
Users who log in can additionally sort businesses by those they have and have not been to before.
The filters will eventually roll out to mobile apps as well, Foursquare said.
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Foursquare Releases App for Windows 8, Reports User Growth
Foursquare today released an app for Windows 8, optimized for the Nokia Lumia phone and Microsoft’s Metro interface.
“We’ve been working closely with Nokia and Microsoft, and today, we’re finally taking the covers off a brand new version of Foursquare for Windows Phone 8, specially optimized for Nokia’s shiny new Lumia phones,” Foursquare said.
The release pitched the app exclusively as a local search app. Foursquare has been endeavoring to become a local search application, rather than a location-based social network.
“Explore like a local!,” the Windows 8 app description crows.
“Don’t waste time reading long reviews from strangers. Wherever you are in the world, open up Foursquare to see where your friends like to go,” it reads, taking a swipe at competitor Yelp.
But its local search features also rely on user check-ins, and the company’s tally of those remains static at 3.5 billion. However, Foursquare’s registered users grew to 33 million after a long stint at 30 million.
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Yelp Continues to Shrink Losses
Yelp reported a first-quarter net loss of $4.8 million, down from 50 percent from the first quarter of last year and 75 percent from the closing quarter of 2012.
Revenue continued to grow, reaching $46.1 million in the first quarter, reflecting 68 percent growth in over the first quarter of 2012. The company said it expects is yearly revenue for 2013 to show 58 percent growth over 2012.
The company continues to expand internationally, but currently just 6 percent of its revenue comes from outside the U.S. Earlier today, it announced a launch in New Zealand, which marks its 21st country.
The website continued to draw more traffic, reaching 102 million unique visitors.
Although more than half of its searches come from mobile devices, just over a third of ad impressions occurred on mobile.
Executives acknowledged that Google, which drives half of its traffic, could be a threat to Yelp’s business. The search giant offers its own ratings, through Zagat, and regulators declined to punish the company for promoting its local search results above its competitors’.
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The Country’s Best Bars — Inmates Review Prisons On Yelp
Prison inmates are giving the phrase “best bars” new meaning by reviewing their court-mandated living quarters on the review site Yelp.
The Washington Post has the back stories on some of the funnier ones:
“At no time did the officer violate any of my constitutional privileges and even gave me a juice box after I said I was thirsty,” reads another review, this one of the Arlington County Detention Facility. “Yes, you heard right, they have juice boxes! . . . So if you’re going to get arrested, do it in Arlington County.”
(This one wasn’t real — there were no juice boxes.) Jokes aside, some of the reviews detail abuse within the system:
In June 2012, a reviewer alleged that five guards at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles beat him for no reason and laughed about it afterward. Other reviews of the jail mention rat infestations, violence and racial tensions.
Prisoners have turned to other social media sites to share their experiences behind bars as well. reddit hosts a number of AMA (Ask Me Anything) interviews with prison guards, prison newbies, ex-cons, and others within the prison system. On Quora, inmate Kenyatta Leal won a 2013 Shorty Award for his personal essay on how he felt on his first day of a lifetime sentence at RJ Donovan Prison.
Lawyer Robert Miller told the Washington Post that Yelp’s review forum, in this case, helps “elevate consciousness of the problems and brings transparency and oversight to a system that isn’t used to being transparent. That’s a very valuable tool.”
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Seven Steps to Clean-Up Your Online Reputation
Once you’ve decided to be transparent, honest, authentic, and human in your online conversations, the content, brand ambassadors, influencer marketing, customer reviews, and a solid product or service will help you cross the marathon finish line. Warren Buffet famously said, “If you lose money for the firm, I will be understanding. If you lose reputation, I will be ruthless.”
Foursquare Promotes Local Search Function on Website, Following Mobile App
Foursquare today launched a redesign of its website today that puts its local-search functions front and center, in keeping with what the company did to its mobile app earlier this month.
Use of the ‘Explore,’ or local search, feature has doubled in the past few months, according to Foursquare, as the company tries to move away from being a location based social network to competing with Yelp and Google Local Search.
“You don’t need to check-in to use Foursquare. With billions of data points, we can always help you find the best places to go,” the company said in its announcement.
The updated website highlights local search content by bringing contact information, events, photos and tips onto each venue page.
The service still leverages check-ins, however, by drawing tips from current activity to “highlight the things people talk about the most.”
The website also shows users which of their contacts have checked-in where to deliver personalized tips. It also uses an algorithm to suggest similar places at the right hand side of venue pages.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
26 Mobile Apps to Improve Your Business and Networking
Have you been spending more of your mobile time using smartphone apps than browsing the web? Suffice it to say, you’re not alone. There are more than a million apps available and according to Sunil Gupta,”Users spend on average, 82% of their mobile minutes with apps and just 18% with web browsers.” In this article, [...]
Category: adobe reader, app, bump, cardmunch, debbie hemley, docusign, easy note + to do, ereader, excel contacts, facebook lite, highlight, Instagram, job search, Kindle, logo mania quiz, meetup, mobile app, Nook, odometer, photo sharing, qr reader, Reddit, smartphone app, social media app, social networking, square register, TED, Tools, ubersocical, vintique, wifi finder, yelp, Zendesk /
Google to Label Search Results Under Reported Settlement with European Commission
Google has reportedly reached an agreement with the European Commission to change its search practices after a two-year investigation on whether the search engine giant favors its own properties in the search results.
Unnamed sources told the New York Times that the European Union’s executive body has accepted Google’s proposed settlement to label content as coming from Google products such as Google Plus Local and Google News rather than changing its algorithm.
According to the article, Google faces up to a 10-percent penalty of global annual sales if the company does not follow the terms of the agreement, which is legally binding for five years and will be enforced by a third party.
Google’s settlement would impact direct competitors like Microsoft as well as specialized search engines, called vertical search services, like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and the British comparison-shopping site Foundem. In Europe, Google commands 86 percent of the online search market, according to comScore.
Microsoft is part of Fairsearch.org, an organization comprised of 17 companies in the U.S., Europe, and South America that has formally complained to the EC about Google’s search practices. Other companies in the group include Expedia, KAYAK, Nokia, and Oracle.
“Google should subject its own products and services to the same policy it uses for others,” said Thomas Vinje, counsel and spokesman for Fairsearch Europe in response to the reported agreement. ”We share Commissioner Almunia’s concern that Google displays links to its own vertical search services differently than it does for links to competitors. This results in preferential treatment for Google in comparison to competing services, and this harms competition and consumers. And as Mr. Almunia said last year, the Internet is global and any remedy for Google’s anti-competitive conduct should be a global one. We will comment on remedies after the Commission shares them.”
European Commission vice president Joaquín Almunia had outlined his concerns about Google’s practices in a letter to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt in May 2012. “If Google comes up with an outline of remedies which are capable of addressing our concerns, I will instruct my staff to initiate the discussions in order to finalise a remedies package,” he wrote.
Google submitted its proposed settlement to the EC earlier this year, which has since been under review.
Image by Picsfive.
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Category: antitrust, european commission, fairsearch, google, Kayak, microsoft, News, TripAdvisor, yelp /
5 Tips for Searching for and Sharing Social Content for Your Brand
It can be challenging to find content that resonates with your brand’s social fans. So why not let them find it for you?Here are five tips for searching and sharing your fans’ social content:
