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Facebook is testing a new rating and review service, and that has Yelp investors twitchy:
Facebook wants to tell you about local businesses, including ratings and reviews from your friends and others who have taken advantage of their offerings. If you're thinking, "That sounds a lot like Yelp," you're not alone.
Yelp Inc. shares dove as much as 9.2% Tuesday after Search Engine Land detailed Facebook Inc.'s new desktop Services offering, which appeared with no announcement or fanfare from the world's largest social network.
"We're in the early stages of testing a way for people to easily find more Pages for the services they're interested in," a Facebook spokesman said in an email.
The push to direct its more than 1 billion users toward local businesses is nothing new for Facebook, which launched a service called Places in 2010 with a similar aim. The difference now is the amount of data Facebook has after years of allowing users to check in and rate local businesses, a wealth of info that has been hard for other Yelp rivals to amass. "With 50M Facebook Business Pages, and a global monthly active mobile user base of $1.5B+, Facebook represents a formidable competitor for anyone in local, especially given the ~60%+ engagement of mobile daily active users," Yelp bull Darren Aftahl, of Roth Capital Partners, wrote in a note Tuesday, as reported by Barron's.
[More After the Break]
Facebook is far from the first to challenge Yelp. Alphabet Inc., then operating as Google, attempted to acquire the company years ago, then instead acquired Zagat and put now-Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer in charge of building a direct competitor, which now is part of Google's dominant search and map offerings. Angie's List Inc. has focused on local services and managed to go public, while startups like Foursquare have challenged Yelp in other areas.
Related: California Outlaws Contracts that Forbid Consumer Reviews
Yelp Will Provide Information in a Defamation Suit
(Score: 4, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:46PM
So I google for "Portland Glory Holes" and the #1 hit is "Find reviews of Portland Glory Holes at Yelp". So I click the link to find a page that asks me to be the first to write a review.
Yelp specifically makes it very difficult to use a search engine to find a brick-and-mortar business. I don't think their desired response was for me to include -yelp in my queries.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @08:30PM
I don't understand. Does Yelp disallow search engines from indexing its pages, does it pay search engines to not show other companies' pages, or what?
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:56PM
I was thinking it was time for MDC to open a glory-hole-emporium in Portland. I mean -- it seem there's an open port -- or opportunity to provide open ports in Portland -- awaiting an industrious entrepreneur! It could be the land of gloryholes, portland oregon!
As the owner, you can be the first to provide a positive review, unless you're the port I guess. I suppose you'd need to put up help wanted ads and stuff, so I guess you'd need to make sure people give good glassdoor reviews, which would provide an interesting take on the whole gloryhole concept if there was a glass wall or door with the port opening in it allowing both customer and service provider to see the exchange of goods take place.
As always, funding is a problem, but perhaps the VCs might be willing to accept a lifetime subscription to the service instead of putting up capital?
we're talking about firewalls as a service, right?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 17 2015, @03:46AM
There is a strip club on every streetcorner here.
One of my very best friends is a bartender at a strip club. When I visited her recently one of her strippers expressed admiration for my being a busker.
"But you're a dancer" I protested.
"Yeah but when people come here, they're paying to see me. You're just standing on the streetcorner."
And in fact it does take some courage to sing on the street.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]