One of the biggest issues with the growing number of location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Blippy, etc.) is how difficult it can be to be a “watcher” as opposed to a “participant”. Many people, including myself, have no interest in broadcasting their locations publicly, but would be interested in seeing what other people are doing and what they have to say about the places they visit.
The solution to the watch vs. participate dilemma is FourWhere, a free service created by Sysomos (a client) that makes it easy to see the places visited and commented on by people using Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla. Using data from the three services and the Google Maps API, FourWhere provides a user-friendly way to access the location-based world without having to...
According to TechCrunch, Google is looking to buy Yelp for $500-million, a move that would boost Google’s presence in the local search and directory business.
Maybe it’s just me but over the past few months, Google’s strategy to take over the world is becoming more evident. If it’s not acquisitions (60 and counting), it’s new (and free!) services such as Google DNS or the recently-unveiled Goo.gl URL shortening service.
This may sound naive given that capitalism is capitalism but does Google need to own everything and offer every online service? Doesn’t it make sense to leave some scraps for competitors so that there’s still some competition?
Don’t get me wrong, Google offers some terrific (and free!) service but the bigger it gets, the more...
Greg Sterling at Screenwerk has an interesting post about a local café in his home town of Oakland called Rooz, which has posted signs saying “No Yelpers” — in other words, no customers who plan to bitch about the service or the food on the Yelp.com customer review site. Greg asked about the sign and got this response:
“What I was told, in a nutshell, is that the café staff has encountered a stream of would-be critics “with attitude,” predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business.”
Greg says the staff argued that some customers were being deliberately snotty in their reviews “for entertainment reasons or to impress the Yelp community,” and weren’t being respectful of the impact their reviews might have on a small...