"The site, which is in an invitation-only "alpha" testing phase, is geared toward helping people ferret out the best local businesses using recommendations from friends and family."
Immediately brings to mind: http://www.thumbtack.com/
AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
11–17 of 17 posts
Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#12Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#13It seems to me AT&T is trying to be more like www.gigpark.com than Yelp. Gigapark was recently sold to Canpages.. the guys operate in Vancouver, BC.
Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#14I'm sure given AT&T's laudable history of building huge-scale, world-class websites and their sterling reputation for dealing with customers in a human fashion this site will do excellently.
I agree with the fact that this is doomed to fail.
AT&T does own Yellow Pages and they do have a head start in that regard.
Wasn't there a story about Yelp being lousy for business owners on HN active list the last few days?
Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#15"AT&T came up with the idea for buzz.com about a year and a half ago, says David Krantz, president and chief executive of AT&T Interactive" He says that so casually, like it was an original idea. And, he's not bothered by the fact that it took them a year and half to launch.
"And, he's not bothered by the fact that it took them a year and half to launch."
Well, considering how long it took Twitter to scale and stop falling over, I'd say taking a little while longer to launch is a good thing.
Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#16This has massive fail written all over it if they don't allow users to speak their mind.
If they would really give this a fair shot with their resources they could really make something of it. I'd love to give this a shot if they did this as a skunkworks project rather than their generally top down approach.
Re: AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
#17"AT&T came up with the idea for buzz.com about a year and a half ago, says David Krantz, president and chief executive of AT&T Interactive" He says that so casually, like it was an original idea. And, he's not bothered by the fact that it took them a year and half to launch.
"And, he's not bothered by the fact that it took them a year and half to launch." Well, considering how long it took Twitter to scale and stop falling over, I'd say taking a little while longer to launch is a good thing.
I don't understand this logic at all. Twitter has learned so much by launching as early as they did, and now it's a huge success. It's better to "scale and stop falling over" while you're improving your product and growing exponentially than spend a year and a half having meetings.