191–200 of 461 posts
Makes me think really hard about tech’s blind adoration for the “PayPal mafia.” I find myself seeing more instances of soul crushing amoral behavior from this group of entrepreneurs than just about any other group.
I've found Google Maps review quality and quantity improved over the last few years so it's rare that I'd even open Yelp in recent months. With this, I'm deleting my Yelp app.
The Google alternative to Yelp is Local Guides: https://maps.google.com/localguides You can earn points and level up for your contributions (reviews, photos), but they don't have anywhere near the incentive structure as Yelp yet.
I'm much more likely to trust reviews from regular users. They don't have to be well written, just descriptive enough for me to make a decision.
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Google maps has definitely improved, but they are even worse than most review sites in the near worthlessness of their review scores. The vast majority of restaurants are rated between 4 and 5 stars, with the difference between a 4.1 and 4.6 being huge - the former being 50/50 that its good, the latter being the sort of place worth waiting in line for. The closest Michelin starred restaurant to me is rated 0.2 points…
Well sure, because a rating doesn't measure how good a restaurant is compared to all other restaurants. Ratings measure how good a restaurant is compared to other restaurants in the same class because that is where their patrons' reference frame comes from. It's also unfair to rate both a $1 coffee and a $8 coffee on the same basis, it's clear that the cost constraints put pressure on how good you can make that coffe…
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I wouldn't necessarily frame that as an inevitability of Dropbox as a product, as much as an inevitability of the traditional VC funding model. It's likely you could build a very healthy business selling people file syncing — I personally use a tiny minimalist Dropbox competitor that seems to be doing just fine. The hypergrowth demanded by investors when you take on $1.7B in funding is what's the challenge.
> The hypergrowth demanded by investors when you take on $1.7B in funding is what's the challenge. This. The local pizza joint is probably a great family operated business with a enough profit to support the owners + employees (but probably not enough profit to support the owners, employees AND investors). If you take that same pizza joint and give them $10m from investors, the pizza joint will attempt to franchise t…
Well, according to some quick searches the founders seem to be doing pretty alright by themselves. It depends if your objective for founding a company is "do something useful" or "get filthy rich as soon as possible"
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I've tried using Google to find places to eat, but Yelp's search is just so much easier. If I'm in a new place, I just pull up Yelp, click "Restaurants" and go with the first thing that has food I like. It's never failed me yet. It might not be the best or cheapest around, but usually the thing with 4+ stars is still pretty good. We've found a couple of places that way where we keep going back every time we're in tow…
Are you perhaps in the Bay Area? Yelp has a very strong presence in the Bay Area. However, when I travel to the EU and outside of California, I notice that the quality/quantity of reviews from Yelp vs Google is reversed. People advised me to find restaurants using Google Maps instead. Restaurants owners also put up sign asking to be rated on Google.
I agree with you though, Yelp totally breaks down outside of the USA. Seems to work pretty well within the US though. We found some great places in Wyoming near Yellowstone for example.
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Steve Jobs FTW yet again. I thought he was wrong about Dropbox for the longest time. But their latest attempts at "productizing" their service (Adobe / Zoom / Slack / Atlassian / Google Docs / Office integrations, "social" features, etc. etc.) have convinced me that simple file sync, which is all I ever wanted from them, is not enough to sustain a company. Meanwhile the shareholder-induced march downwards continues.
I will never forgive Dropbox for limiting free users to 3 linked devices, which promptly resulted in half the people I preached the gospel of Dropbox to ringing my phone and being pissed at ME.
Maybe they could give you more devices if you get people to sign up, like they used to give away additional storeage if you got people to sign up for dropbox
I've found Google Maps review quality and quantity improved over the last few years so it's rare that I'd even open Yelp in recent months. With this, I'm deleting my Yelp app.
I usually eat dinner around the time most restaurants have closed in the area. I find when I search google maps it gives me places closed, and often the hours in their listings are off. To be fair, hours have improved quite a bit in the last year.
I need a way to filter what I'm looking for.
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> have convinced me that simple file sync, which is all I ever wanted from them, is not enough to sustain a company. Is the problem that it's not enough to sustain a company, or that it's not enough to sustain investors who unreasonable expect constant growth? I'd posit that Dropbox has a sustainable business, and that their changes will likely hurt the long-term viability of that business.
Why would anyone pay $9.99 a month for Dropbox when you can pay $9.99 for Office 365, get the full office suite for six users with 1TB of storage each? I’ve never tried it, but unlike Dropbox, with OneDrive you can share folders without the shared folders taking away from your storage. With Dropbox for instance with the free account, if you have 2GB of storage and use a shared folder with 2GB of storage you still hav…
Well, what is Dropbox doing wrong that they have to charge so much more? (Given that offering more products for the same price basically equivalent to charging less per product)
It's hard to make money as a directory service with Google and Apple Maps around. The shadier they get, the bigger of a sign it is that they're in trouble financially, I would think.
Has Yelp's position on the perceived shadiness scale changed in the last several years? There've been allegations of extortion, defamation, and rigging, that entire time. I don't know that allegations of faking phone numbers is any worse, only less familiar.
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> The hypergrowth demanded by investors when you take on $1.7B in funding is what's the challenge. This. The local pizza joint is probably a great family operated business with a enough profit to support the owners + employees (but probably not enough profit to support the owners, employees AND investors). If you take that same pizza joint and give them $10m from investors, the pizza joint will attempt to franchise t…
>Some companies simply aren't meant to be billion dollar companies, yet raise money as if they will be. Well, according to some quick searches the founders seem to be doing pretty alright by themselves. It depends if your objective for founding a company is "do something useful" or "get filthy rich as soon as possible"