421–430 of 461 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I do not understand is why nobody copied yelp with an ethical business model yet.
I assume Foursquare is not the same thing? I never used Yelp, but used Foursquare for apparently the same thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With so many good restaurants, why would I go back to one where I had a bad time?
That's not the question. It's natural not to want to go back to somewhere something bad happened. The question is why anybody else would care about bad luck that someone had, as opposed to a bad experience that was representative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The google map slowly switches into proactive mode and solicits photos, ratings, and reviews. Funny, I hate when google asks me this. It feels like an invasion of my privacy, a reminder that they are tracking everything I do.
It only does this if you have location services turned on. You actually told Google it was ok to use your location to provide location specific services. That's not what I would call "tracking", which implies something clandestine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the extortion scheme as simple as that? Paying businesses get "Yelp Sort", non-payers get "Default Sort"? If so, that answers a lot of questions.
No. I believe every page defaults to the same sort.
It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…
I've never been a fan of Yelp as either a service or a company, but the assumption that they used yelp to look up the phone number isn't warranted here. Yelp's whole value prop has always been reviews and discoverability, and you're just handwaving that away and claiming that the only relevant workflow here is googling a known restaurant after having made the decision to order and using Yelp's page simply to find the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with using another form of payment is I won't purchase from a small business online without PayPal. PayPal offers consumer protection so I can take a risk with a company I don't trust yet. if it goes bad I can file a complaint and it will almost always get resolved.
You find PayPal better to deal with than your credit card company?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It only does this if you have location services turned on. You actually told Google it was ok to use your location to provide location specific services. That's not what I would call "tracking", which implies something clandestine.
Google requires this permission to do anything remotely location-based and uses it extremely liberally. I shouldn't have to agree to have them link my photos to the restaurant I'm in just so I can save a home location for driving directions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ignoring advertising for a moment, mobile apps are first-class clients, whereas mobile websites frequently aren't. Mobile websites are usually stripped-down experiences, and the company doesn't want to invest the effort in turning the mobile website into a first-class client because most of the users are on the mobile app. It's easier to just funnel people into the app, which is also much more likely to get the user…
That seems entirely circular. The mobile website is poorly made, so people use the mobile app, so the mobile website is neglected. I can understand why the mobile app gains dominance after the cycle starts. The question is more why this cycle starts.
Or to put it another way, Yelp would be rightfully lambasted for not having a mobile app. Having a mobile app is table stakes for a site like Yelp. And if you've got all this engineering effort going towards a mobile app, why double your workload by also building a first-class mobile site? The mobile site just needs to be functional enough to satisfy the basic needs of casual users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never been a fan of Yelp as either a service or a company, but the assumption that they used yelp to look up the phone number isn't warranted here. Yelp's whole value prop has always been reviews and discoverability, and you're just handwaving that away and claiming that the only relevant workflow here is googling a known restaurant after having made the decision to order and using Yelp's page simply to find the…
It’s absolutely warranted here because the article author mentions they are calling their favorite sushi restaurant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I used to use Yelp, I found the reviews are so hard to wade though. So many: - I had a bad time .. once. - This restaurant isn't as good as this other place that is twice as expensive. - We had to wait a "long time". - The food sucked (because they don't like the kind of food they serve...). - This place sucks and you should go to this other completely different place.
I don't find reviews helpful at the best of times, food is simply too subjective. Some people want "authentic" dishes, others want anglicized (think texmex) versions, each will give poor rating to the other. Some people will want something sweet others will find the sweetness too strong. Everyone has a different definition of "too spicy". "Restaurant" is often to granular too, sometimes a good place will have some ba…
Google maps is doing this now. I hope it catches on.