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Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

cnbc.com

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Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#231

Post by kibwen »

wilg wrote: post #182
mlrtime wrote: post #9

I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.

I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology experts. Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app. Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve. If you don't…

Because the experience of "installing" a web page by visiting the URL is still orders of magnitude more pleasant than installing an app. No need to clutter your homescreen with an app that you'll use twice and then forget about. Alternatively, no risk of not putting on your home screen and then forgetting about the 600 MB it's silently occupying on your disk until you're midway through your sister's wedding and trying to quickly free up space for more photos. No permissions to grant. No contributing to the endless stream of update notifications. No running in the background eating battery or ferrying your contacts to their servers or listening in on your microphone to use your voice for training their machine learning models.

Mobile websites are easier to install, fine to use for anything that doesn't require specific hardware permissions, and then when the user stops using them they stay gone. Not to mention they work on my Linux machine and my Windows machine and my iPad and my Galaxy. Forget apps.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#232

Post by ubercore »

stcredzero wrote: post #156
ubercore wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could AI identify long lines outside of restaurants Google already gives you the hours that restaurants are busiest, so they basically have this info

I've seen that part of the Google listing, which is part of the reason why I made the suggestion. Google shouldn't just go by raw traffic, however. Traffic means different things at different times to different kinds of venues. High traffic at the DMV doesn't mean it's an awesome place. A line of 20 people means one thing to a sit down restaurant and something very different to a Boba tea place. I suspect that AI app…

Right but if you're talking about restaurants, where people want to be (rather than the DMV where they have to be), I don't see why busyness isn't essentially the same as looking at lines outside.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#233

Post by smelendez »

wilg wrote: post #182
mlrtime wrote: post #9

I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.

I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology experts. Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app. Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve. If you don't…

Well, it's especially annoying with something like Yelp that you often use on the go and sometimes in stressful situations (somebody in your group is hungry and ornery).

Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#234

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #211
Scoundreller wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dearly hope my bank raises a flag if I decide to choose a language other than English on the ATM. I’ve only chosen it 9134 times in a row.

"Congratulations, Scoundreller, on learning a new language. As a reward we've temporarily lifted your maximum withdrawal limit!"

Not sure if joke about you choosing english and the machine being shit or just not knowing another language to make the job more authentic.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#235

Post by michaelmrose »

Scoundreller wrote: post #163
oh_sigh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and even when you switch to old mode it frequently reverts when you use the back button. They are intentionally making the web mobile experience horrible because they think that you'll be more engaged if you use the app.

So now that reddit’s Death has begun, what’s our alternative?

While I think the redesign is bloated and slower its not unusable and you can opt out of it at present.

Being prompted repeatedly to open in app is certainly annoying but at present most mobile users probably use one of the apps. At least for android where 85% of your global market lives there are 7 different options nearly all of which are better than viewing in mobile firefox/chrome.

In short your experience is valid but since you probably represent a small percentage of the userbase reports of reddits death are still presumably greatly exaggerated.

On android I like Reddit is fun

Here is a thread discussing a replacement on ios

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/5w4885/ios_replacem...

On the lighter side old reddits code was open source and lives on in voat which at present is infested with a lot of racists and alt right. Maybe we can all move over and "voat" them out of their new home like we kicked them off reddit.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#236

Post by a_wild_dandan »

Scoundreller wrote: post #171
wlesieutre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you want to view it in the official Reddit app for the best experience ? No, no I don't. And the official reddit app is not the best experience.

It’s a matter of time before they acquire the top app or two and block the rest.

Guess it's a matter of time before I stop using Reddit then.

I already ran to Relay as an escape from Reddit's astonishingly garbage mobile browser experience. Next stop is the door.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#237

Post by wccrawford »

wilg wrote: post #182
mlrtime wrote: post #9

I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.

I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology experts. Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app. Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve. If you don't…

Why install a 20-50mb app that does exactly the same thing as what the site does in a browser window?

And that's besides the other objections that I've seen others write here.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#238

Post by crunchlibrarian »

mlrtime wrote: post #9

I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will not be missed.

I haven't installed a new app in like 18 months. I'm done with that song and dance, tired of my device always being the product, especially after I just spent $1000 on a phone.

You better have mobile web figured out properly or you're not getting me as a customer.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#239

Post by amelius »

cletus wrote: post #221

Good. The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago. Rather than innovate they chose to: - Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites (those that advertised with Yelp rank higher, negative reviews can mysteriously disappear for advertisers) - Whine to regulators about Google is stealing content from them (by, you know, serving a snippet of content that Yelp allows to be scraped). - Harass us…

> The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago.

Out of context, that would be a good thing. I hate it when a company changes user interface every week, just to stay in fashion.

Re: Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site

#240

Post by wlesieutre »

Scoundreller wrote: post #171
wlesieutre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you want to view it in the official Reddit app for the best experience ? No, no I don't. And the official reddit app is not the best experience.

It’s a matter of time before they acquire the top app or two and block the rest.

IIRC the official app is from them buying AlienBlue, which used to be the best one on iOS. These days it's Apollo.

Apollo recently moved some push notification features behind a subscription to cover ongoing costs, separate from their "Pro" one time in-app purchase, so I think Reddit is at least taking a cut from API usage by other clients.

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