Talk:Yelp/Archive 1

Canadian

Perhaps this isn't the best location for this (feel free to remove if this is the case), but I'm looking for a Yelp alternative for Canadian cities. Any suggestions? Onishenko 03:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

site features

Under site features, I expanded the paragraph to include different modes of searching and browsing Yelp content. I also wanted to clarify "star ratings" and explain business-specific dossiers. I also added a section called "Demographics" to offer people an idea of one tracking firm's take on who visits Yelp. JonathanGCohen 16:02, 23 January 2008 (EST)

One sentence says "Yelp allows real people to contribute their own reviews." Isn't everyone a real person? Isn't this sentence redundant in already establishing that users can contribute reviews? 129.2.129.226 (talk) 06:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

It may be worthwhile to mention their mobile apps as part of the company's products, which has reached a good 10million installs (http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/02/yelpcom-welcomes-100-million-unique-visitors-in-january-2013.html). Stoppleman also mentions he's trying to shift the company towards mobile (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57555084-93/yelp-ceo-yep-google-can-be-pretty-evil) badassdon (talk) 23:46, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Avoiding spam, lists, and extraneous links

Please don't post links from the Wikipedia article about one company directly to the home page of another company. If you think it's useful to an understanding of Yelp to discuss how it compares or differs from other notable sites, you should add a "similar services" section and present a fair, balanced analysis of that. The links should be to the Wikipedia entries for other sites, not to the sites themselves. If you want to discuss web 2.0 and user review sites generally, go to the articles on those web trends. Wikipedia is not a business directory so it's a fruitless effort to try to list them all, but sometimes those articles do list examples. Finally, if there is another site that is your famous or is otherwise of interest, why not go to (or create) an article about that site and talk about it there?

For sure, don't use the Yelp article as a place to try to generate web traffic for a different site. Whether you're the site owner or just a fan that's Wikipedia:Spam. Thanks. Wikidemo 04:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Placed {{unencyclopedic}} on one section. Hydrogen Iodide 01:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. To understand a web 2.0 company and product, and see how it fits in with other companies, it is useful to know what features it includes. A list format is adequate for that. Stringing the feature list together with descriptive prose would not add anything. Just give us the facts! Wikidemo 05:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia, however, is an encyclopedia, not a usability comparison for Web 2.0 products or companies. This is coming rather close to advertising, and does not appear to be covered in reliable sources. >Radiant< 09:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Fact tags and advert tag

If someone can explain what, specifically looks like an "advertisement" I'll allow the tag to stay. As it is the tag just looks like an opinion that Wikipedia should not discuss website features and operation. That's very important to an encyclopedic understanding of social network services and the Web 2.0 industry. Nothing in the article is opinion, and certainly not "advertisement" - there's no promotion, no jingle, no solicitation to do anything. Tags like that are really unhelpful.

The excessive fact tagging is also unhelpful. I'm sure they can be cited, but it's a silly exercise. Am I supposed to find a cite that says that Yelp lists hours and parking information? I'm sure it's out there - there is reliable sourcing out there somewhere on just about every possible aspect of the site. But it's silly because these things are obviously true - just go the the site and see for yourself. Tags are supposed to be for legitimate questions of fact, not objection to the type of content that is being covered. Wikidemo (talk) 01:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay. I've added citations to everything that was fact tagged and more. I trust anyone can see that this is an encyclopedic article, not an advertisement. Several things are crucial to understanding what is going on with the site: (1) the combination of social networking and user reviews, which was truly novel - and Yelp was the most successful, perhaps the only successful, company to do that despite lots of competition; (2) the trust system / Reputation system, a huge topic on Web 2.0 these days. Newspapers like Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune write about it, as well as tech sites like TechCrunch, and so on. There are hundreds if not thousands of reliable sources for all this - it's what the people in the field write about. If this were an advertisement it would tell businesses how much benefit they can get by paying for sponsorships, or how users can find the best restaurant. The article does not invite people to join or praise how useful the site is; rather, it follows the reliable sources in reporting on why Yelp succeeded in a novel area of business. If nobody has any further objections I'll remove the advert tag in a day or two. If they do, please say exactly what you're objecting to. Wikidemo (talk) 03:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Certain portions still seem somewhat too brochure-like. It's all in the selection of "facts" and use of wording, not so much in the validity of the article itself or the description of what the site is and does. For example, there's a bunch of cities listed, with notes about "offers neighborhood filtering", without any idea of where this information comes from. For one, this isn't really valuable to know in an encyclopedic article and lends itself to the idea this has been updated by Yelp directly as part of its general publicity (because who else beside insiders would really know this). A bit of an aside, but it's also going to be dated rapidly, making for poor article upkeep. To be encyclopedic, the descriptions I think would tend to be more permanent. As Wikipedia points out, this is not a news site. I'd argue it's not a press release site, either. Even having such a long listing of cities seems suspect (I can't believe all of these are a subset of the "most active"). Anyway, much of the article would be much more interesting if it actually focused on what Yelp has done in a novel way or as the first-mover, as you suggested this was what makes the Yelp site important in Web history to begin with. The article is *not* written in that vain unfortunately but still reads as a collection of summarized press releases or a corporate brochure. It's much better than before, but still deserves its "advertising" label as of yet. You're doing a great job though...keep it up...I'll try to join in. -Gych (talk) 04:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had no part in that and hadn't even given it much thought. True, repeating a list of cities isn't very helpful. It's hard to know who might be doing that - an IP address. It could be an employee but it's just as easy to imagine it's a fan of the site doing original research off something they found on the site pages. I'm all for removing it, which I would do under the theory that it's unsourced and an indiscriminate list of info. Please point out any other things, specifically so I can address them, or work on the article tone directly. Leaving article quality tags on indefinitely isn't good - best to bring the article up to better standards. Wikidemo (talk) 04:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Editing in progress to remove Advert

I reworked the first 3 sections of the Site Features section. Most likely controversial are the removal of the User Profiles section and a large removal in the Business Reviews section, both of which were dropped because they were more a discussion of the concepts than of any particular relevance to Yelp alone. Parts of the User Profiles section can and probably should be rescued (the Elite member concept) and placed into the User Generated Content section (to further point out the uniqueness of combining social networking with content contributions). The Business Reviews lines removed were pretty clearly a discussion of reviewing, not a discussion of Yelp (and the user reviews site concept is already discussed elsewhere. The Technical features discussion is up next, and needs to be converted to be less marketing description-like and more encyclopedic in tone, but I'm done for the night. -Gych (talk) 05:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

So far so good. The structure, language, flow, etc., usefulness of the article, are all greatly improved - masterful job. I'll hold off on making any changes until you're done. I think a few things eliminated as non-notable do go beyond routine or expected stuff. The ones I can think about:

• Site encourages people to use real names and photos, edit in straightforward way, yet performs little moderation. Their tag-line is or used to be "real people, real reviews" - several thousands of ghits for this but I could not quickly find a reliable source. But there are sources to say that keeping it real is a rather important ingredient that ties into the trust / reputation system. That's not as obvious as it sounds. Other user-submitted sites favor more anonymity and use of avatars...e.g. Wikipedia. Yet others are more strict than Yelp on the expectation that your online persona matches the real one, e.g. linkedin. This is notable because it ties into a rather important unanswered question on how online social networks map to real-world individuals.
• "Elite" status. Yelp's approach is rather unusual, and it's been written about a number of times. Most user-submitted content sites do not have super-user level and it seems to be part of their adoption strategy.
• Site has the routine user profile stuff - well, that's unremarkable but a quick statement to that effect is encyclopedic
• "Business reviews". The fact that Yelp reached near 100% of coverage of all businesses, and is super-saturated (sometimes hundreds of reviews per establishment) is actually a bit remarkable and tests some limits of these sites. They're dealing with questions of relevancy, quality, aging, etc., and possibly in new territory there. Also, the notion that people are rating services, parks, museums, etc., as they do restaurants - that it's more or less all local businesses and services, yet nothing on a national level - no reviews of bands, products, e-commerce stuff. All that goes to the company's positioning. The point isn't to read like a brochure but to distinguish what it's doing from, say, epinions. - Wikidemo (talk) 09:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll try to work in much of what you pointed out. First up I'm going to read the sources you and others identified so I can separate the original research from the cited work. I need to check on things like "100% coverage" which seems suspect and doesn't line up with my own usage of Yelp's site, for example. -Gych (talk) 01:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Validated references up through 10 (Social Design Patterns). #11 seems irrelevant to the statements but leaving that for another day. Notes take so far on references up to 11 with many points to add

• over 4000 SF restaurant reviews, 100s on some profiles
• total of 2.3M reviews (as of 2/08)
• lots of Elite members stuff
• Yelp coverage is national
• 85% of reviews are positive in nature
• some information on criticisms (section to be added)

More to come -Gych (talk) 05:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Don't assume that everything uncited is original research - Yelp gets written about very often but not all the sources (tech blogs, other local sites, and so on) are reliable. Speaking of unreliable sources one has to be careful about the criticism. A number of news articles are flatly inaccurate. One interesting angle is from local businesses who resent various things: non-expert criticism, being poorly understood, suffering a flood of bad reviews from a single incident, mean-spirited or fake reviews from competitors or others, and a perceived arrogance or lack of respect from reviewers who show up in real life. There has been some press bout this, and also people sore about having content removed or kicked off the site without explanation (or so they claim - coverage of this is growing on many different social network sites). But you do have to be careful. Smaller newspapers without skeptical fact-checking tend to print claims by businesses as being true but often the business owner makes things up. Some press reporting on what makes Yelp so great (or bad, or why it is going to succeed or fail) could be swallowing somebody's press release or expounding on their own pet theory of web 2.0. Tech blogs are bad about having idiosyncratic pet theories. Also, it's a moving target. Something written about what the site is or does two years ago may or may not hold true today.

I'll give this a berth for now because this is improving the article considerably. The positive review bias is interesting - grade inflation perhaps? I'm not sure where to find a source but I suspect the rating distribution is different than other sites because people are motivated to create reviews for the social aspect of it - or to be known for review-writing, whereas on sites without the social component people disproportionately write reviews to get something off their chest, positive or negative. Wikidemo (talk) 09:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Done

Main sections are fully edited. I believe I've worked back in any relevant information dropped from the 232621231 edit as well as added in the new data I found. I'll take another pass tomorrow (or soon anyway) to check language, grammar, and sentence structure. But feel free to edit at this point. For the most part, I'm done with these sections. If you're satisfied, remove the advert tag. -Gych (talk) 05:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Tag Removed

Removed advert tag after 5 days of no comments. -Gych (talk) 03:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

I'm not going to place my own judgments on the criticisms I've read, just planning to log them briefly as I've seen on many a business-focused page here on Wikipedia. The sources seem credible and non-trivial. My suggested text...

"Yelp has been criticized over the fairness of negative reviews on the site. Some business owners have even posted "No Yelpers" signs in frustration. Yelp defends its practices and states that it will not censor user comments. Criticism has also be levied by business owners who believe that the ordering of reviews is controlled and used to pressure businesses into advertising, with salespersons suggesting negative reviews can be placed last for a fee. Yelp rejects these charges and believes there is possibly confusion around the highlighted review offering."

Please suggest improved wording if you believe I have mistated the criticisms or Yelp responses. The section inclusion is common and fair.

• http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759933-7.html?hhTest=1
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/yelp_sales_pitch/
• http://cbs5.com/wrapper_consumer/seenon/Yelp.Internet.ratings.2.787400.html
• http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-businesses-pay-for-different-sorting-of-review

-Gych (talk) 05:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Moved to main article page after lack of comment -Gych (talk) 03:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I own big guys pizza, Pasta and sportsbar and it seems like Yelp has for some reason or another filtered 5 of my very positive reviews and allowed a review which had nothing to do with how the food was but a post in which what may have happened at the other end of the shopping center to be in the main area of my page, I frankly want all the reviews not filtered, good or bad or remove my establishment from Yelp's website. Ofcourse their is noway to really contact them either and this as well bothers me. so yes, any criticism towards yelp is certainly warranted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.110.81.16 (talk) 23:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Criticism section error

The following line was recently added: "Yelp also removes negative comments for companies that pay a listing fee." and this statement is inaccurate please see:

• http://www.yelp.com/faq#removingReviews

I work for Yelp and do not want to violate any rules by touching this page myself, can someone independently verify? Aside from this disclosure on our site one can verify for themselves by finding a sponsor with negative reviews on their page. A search for burrito near sf showed me this sponsor

• http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-calaca-loca-oakland

On their page you'll find 2 star and 1 star reviews. Sponsors cannot remove negative reviews. Jstopp (talk) 06:45, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention and for respecting the conflict of interest warning. I've removed the material as being disputed unsourced information. We are not supposed to do original research by checking out sites and saying what we find - as an encyclopedia we have to rely on "reliable sources" - i.e. neutral, fact-checked, third party sources like newspapers, books, government records, etc., which to some extent rules out what a site says about itself. Anyway, the claim is unsourced so I removed it. If a major reliable press source made this claim, and there were not other sources to contradict it, it would be appropriate. If it's just somebody's opinion or griping from the notorious tech editorial/blogosphere it is not suitably sourced. Hope that helps. Wikidemon (talk) 07:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciate the help. Jstopp (talk) 18:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello,

The following line was recently added: "Yelp has also angered contributors by taking down negative reviews of businesses which are Yelp sponsors. Yelp's sponsor businesses can thus achieve artificially high scores." this statement is false and has no citation to back it up, therefore it should be removed.

I work for Yelp so I cannot touch the page myself, thanks for taking a look 65.87.22.62 (talk) 18:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed unsourced information. You can edit the page, but policy states you should do so with great caution, just FYI. ^Law _shoot! 02:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

A growing number of small business owners claim that Yelp employees are writing bad reviews of their businesses, placing them in a conspicuous location at the top of the page, and charging them money to bury the reviews again. This has been corroborated by other Yelp employees and thoroughly documented in news articles (*http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20) and class action lawsuits. In any other setting, this would be called extortion. I don't see a section describing the practice of Yelp employees writing negative reviews themselves. I'd attempt a summary but I'm afraid I wouldn't be impartial enough. Ubruni (talk) 08:16, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Beacon

Is the Beacon section really worth mentioning? -Gych (talk) 05:20, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

A belated response... Beacon is a huge deal with a lot of major coverage, and probably an important turning point in online privacy, social nets, etc. Where it is turning we don't know but it is a big deal. If Yelp is using beacon it is big news, particularly if it is still doing so and without major controversy. Nevertheless, that's not for us to decide. If it gets written up in enough reliable sources we know that the world cares to read about this so it's got sufficient WP:WEIGHT to cover. If it's relatively undocumented and up to what you and I happen to think about it, you could make the argument that nobody cares but me and then the section could be removed if challenged. Hope that helps. Wikidemon (talk) 07:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

UK

The article should mention Yelp's expansion to the UK, if a citable source can be found. ike9898 (talk) 16:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

East Bay Express articles

I wrote a paragraph about some of the allegations in the East Bay Express, which was appropriately taken down due to POV and credibility concerns: (History diff)

Some of these allegations go beyond de-emphasizing negative reviews for Yelp's advertising clients. There were claims of both negative and positive reviews disappearing, as well as Yelp staff writing reviews. A nightclub owner says he was asked to provide free drinks and party space in exchange for favorable reviews. A Chicago art studio instructor who gave his name but not the name of his studio says that soon after turning down Yelp advertising, three positive reviews disappeared and two negative ones appeared. Of course he had no way of proving the new bad reviews were not legitimate, but the disappearance of positive reviews does not appear to have an explanation.

These irregularities are not mentioned in the criticisms section. I'm just passing through, so it'd be great if someone who hangs out on this page could address this stuff. Thanks. --Loqi (talk) 06:11, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a poorly written expose in a local weekly scandal rag - many of the claims are not credible, and it would be a WP:WEIGHT problem to reproduce individual gripes. Yelp has explained why both positive and negative and positive reviews disappear. The site is, like most consumer-facing websites, subject to a lot of gripes, theories, and detractors. It's fair to mention the article and summarize its tone in general terms, and probably to mention the often repeated claim supported by other articles that some businesses believe they were promised review manipulation in exchange for sponsorship. But lifting any of the specific anecdotal accounts and unproven speculation is unencyclopedic and raises the possibility of spreading rumors and untruths. Some much more thoughtful articles have been written on this very subject (and some analysis of the East Bay Express article) in the national press. Wikidemon (talk) 06:23, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I want to reiterate that it comes across as suspicious that the criticism section is so brief. This actually hurts the company because people like me drifting through figure the article has been vandalized by Yelp. It's important to summarize the EBE piece and include Yelp's response. It's also important to include discussion of Yelpers being sued over reviews, along with Yelp's ever-vigilant response. Cutting these from the article just isn't credible. Any problems with adding? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abc1812 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, the East Bay Express piece is a minor and not very good work of investigative journalism. It is full of inaccuracies. As such it should not be given undue WP:WEIGHT. The tech press, blogosphere, and weekly rags are full of stories like this about most websites. If you listen to them, not only Yelp but Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, google, and probably overstock.com are greedy trouble-plagued sites that sweep everything under the rug. The problem with using minor, techy, or scandal-mongering sources to describe consumer web service companies like Yelp is that it would tend to endorse that view of the world where everything is some kind of scandal and travesty. In the case of Yelp specifically, we should pay due attention to what the more significant sources have to say. There is a systemic issue with having user-submitted reviews (or any reviews) to a site that obtains its revenue from the companies being reviewed, a conflict of interest with no clear middle point. Every site that tries to do this seems to run afoul of either the reviewers, the reviewed entities, or the public - often based on fears, rumors, and misperceptions. That's the larger picture which these occasional exposes fit into, although they generally don't cast their findings that way. The occasional lawsuits against Yelp members do seem noteworthy, but it is hard to get good reportage of them. As far as I know, all made a minor splash when a site member told the press they were being threatened or sued, but then one side quickly capitulated and then there's no follow-up story. They are covered as one-offs for the most part, and the journalists have not done a whole lot to connect the dots to other Yelp lawsuits, or on the wider question of online defamation suits more generally. I don't recall any particular vigilant response by Yelp to this. The founder had a minor press campaign to answer claims of bias, but I don't know that they did anything about the lawsuits. Wikidemon (talk) 17:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Blackmail claims, again

A new WP:SPA has added three times a summary of claims of "blackmail" of local businesses by Yelp. Here is the latest revision[1] to the current version, which already represents a consensus on how much or little to raise regarding the rather unremarkable fact that a consumer web site has critics: Yelp has been criticized over the fairness of negative reviews on the site and for trying to squeeze advertising revenues from small businesses. Yelp states that it will not censor user comments, although it does remove favorable and unfavorable reviews that are considered "suspicious". Yelp has paid reviewers who disguise themselves as non biased reports. Many restaurants in the bay area have complained about being blackmailed to advertise or have bad reviews posted. Yelp sales people have called restaurants and told them that if they advertise negative reviews would disappear or move to the bottom. Dozens of documented instances where businesses have been targeted have been reported by local newspapers. Restaurants and other businesses that have declined to advertise have suddenly found dozens of negative reviews appear. Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman himself has posted over 860 reviews of businesses.

1. on the site - sentence is awkward without this qualification
2. and for trying to squeeze advertising revenues from small businesses - the existing citation does not support this claim, the informal colorful use of "squeeze" is unenncyclopedic, and it is implausible that a website that makes money through small business advertisements would be criticized for trying to obtain money from small businesses.
3. Yelp has paid reviewers who disguise themselves as non biased reports. - ungrammatical. Not supported by existing source. Unlikely to be sourceable, inherently contentious so it would need an inline attribution of the claim. Unlikely to be true.
4. Many restaurants in the bay area have complained about being blackmailed to advertise or have bad reviews posted.Unsourced and likely unsourceable and untrue. What the sources do say is that there were several examples they could find of establishment owners who claimed that Yelp sales representatives offered they could remove or de-prioritize negative reviews if they advertised, a claim that has some intuitive appeal but is readily explainable and has been explained.
5. Yelp sales people have called restaurants and told them that if they advertise negative reviews would disappear or move to the bottom. This claim that has actually been made, although the proposal incorrectly (and in a biased way) endorses the claim as true. On balance it does not make much sense per WP:WEIGHT to report what looks like random conspiracy theorizing about the evils of businesses, as reported in a few minor sources. Any consumer web company is going to get trashed in the tech press, free weeklies, and scandal sheets, that's what they do. I don't think it's encyclopedic to add that stuff to all the business articles because that would turn Wikipedia into a scandal wiki. There has to be some threshold of credibility and importance to the claims.
6. Dozens of documented instances where businesses have been targeted have been reported by local newspapers.No source has been offered for this, and it would be improper to use newspapers as WP:PSTS primary sources for assessing whether the newspapers have adequately documented their stories, or how many cases they report. A more neutral way to say this is that local newspapers occasionally run negative stories on Yelp, something that is unremarkable.
7. Restaurants and other businesses that have declined to advertise have suddenly found dozens of negative reviews appear. No source offered, likely unsourceable and untrue. See note above about conspiracy theories. Even if it were worth reporting the theory it would be have to be reported as such, not endorsed as true.
8. Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman himself has posted over 860 reviews of businesses.Likely true but unsourced. Without a secondary source this is just original research. The rule against OR is not just to ensure factual accuracy, but also to assess whether a fact is significant and relevant enough to include in the article. To my knowledge no reliable source has ever mentioned Stoppelman's review count in the context of a criticism of Yelp or in any other context, so using it here is just voicing the editor's opinion.

Also, the editor proposing this is a WP:SPA with no edits other than edit warring the article. Barring any surprises I'll probably remove the content again within several hours. - Wikidemon (talk) 03:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The editor is revert warring after a warning, and has not engaged in discussion on their talk page or here - I surmise at this point it's not good faith editing. Again, I'll revert in a few hours unless I hear something, and ask for administrative help if it continues. - Wikidemon (talk) 00:04, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I somewhat disagree While the user who is making those edits (WP:SPA) is clearly not going about it in the right way, the criticisms section of this article is not strong enough. There are just too many claims out there of people having positive reviews removed from their site if they don't pay yelp for there not to be some truth behind it. I'm new to wikipedia and I just learned about these Yelp scams a week ago. What kind of proof/sources do we need to find to get this added to the criticisms section?Truepusk (talk) 18:34, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Here is a source: But Yelp's policy is not to remove negative postings. "Instead they removed some positive postings. They refused to remove the bad posting, and then they called me to solicit a business account," said Kellinger. http://cbs5.com/consumer/Yelp.Internet.ratings.2.787400.htmlTruepusk (talk) 18:43, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

As an editorial comment, I don't see that there's any convincing documentation out there that Yelp has done anything wrong. All we have are claims by some businesspeople unhappy with their reviews or Yelp's phone sales attempts. You would need sufficiently robust reliable sourcing - not just rumors and claims, but some neutral mainstream publications that look into them and say that they're noteworthy and credible. Most consumer Internet sites have lots of detractors, scandal-mongers, and claims of fraud - that comes with the territory. Most Wikipedia articles face a constant attempt to fill the description with every last scandal and they have to be constantly pruned back. That's true of Craigslist, Facebook, google, all the major sites. Until there's something solid, we can only include what we can source, which is that people have claimed such things and that there is a lawsuit - two things already in the article. 20-25% of the article is already about controversies and criticisms, which is disproportionate to the actual description of what Yelp is and does as it is. - Wikidemon (talk) 19:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree. All I want to do is add to the criticisms that not only have numerous people claimed that Yelp calls them and offers to remove or hide negative reviews, but also will remove positive reviews if they do not pay. I know the wording needs to be worked on. And honestly, your comparison to craigslist, facebook, google, etc. - do a google search on the alleged scandals of those and see what comes up. Compare it to the google search of the Yelp scandals. You will see what I'm talking about. There is more than enough information out there to convince me that this rings true. It's just a matter of finding sources that you find appropriate.

The link I listed is a local CBS station. I would think that is more than mainstream enough to be appropriate. But I should probably find multiple. What do you think?Truepusk (talk) 19:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I've looked into the Yelp accusations and have found nothing solid, just accusations that are a lot more plausibly explained as paranoid / upset business owners and sensationalist tech journalists than some kind of conspiracy to run a scam. There are a lot more claimed scandals for Craigslist and Facebook. Of Zynga. Look at Criticism of Facebook, for example. The article already sources claims that there were threats to write negative reviews or offers to hide them. If we can find sources that there are claims that they deleted positive reviews on similar basis we can source that someone made that claim too. It's better if we can find a publication that says "People have complained" or "there are numerous complaints", or "a scandal has arisen", or "Yelp faces lingering accusations", some summary like that is a better guide than coverage of a single complaint. Sometimes papers include a single example because it's interesting or a good read, but it's more informative if we can get some kind of context for how common the complaints are. Anyway, if you can do the work to find a few links I'm happy to add that to the article. I'll do it with the full markup and you can use that as a model for next time if you want to add something yourself. The key is to repeat as faithfully as you can what the source actually says, and then get all the markup and footnotes right - I prefer to use the <ref name="xx">{{cite news|A=xxx|B=yyy}}</ref> format for citations. Wikidemon (talk) 23:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for helping a wikipedia newbie. Your explanations on which type of publications or more importantly quotes to find is helpful. I do believe that the controversies here are quite different than those with facebook or craigslist. Those are a laundry list of complaints, some legitimate some more just nit-picks. Here I would argue that if what the business owners are claiming is true, then it strikes to the heart of yelp not being what it is supposed to be. To be completely honest, if I were in your shoes I would be just as skeptical, but some people I know had their reviews removed and when they asked the restaurant about it the restaurant mentioned getting extortion calls itself. It's possible that it was an honest mistake and that yelp's algorithms were being overzealous. But when I combine it with the absurdly large number of comments in threads of people claiming to have experienced this extortion I get the strong impression that it isn't just a small number of nuts out there. Maybe this story, if really true, needs to be broken harder in the media and that's the route I should be focusing on. [and I have no idea how to fix the formatting and signatures here].—Preceding unsigned comment added by Truepusk (talk • contribs) 22:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Criticism reworking

Yelp now filters all reviews unless you're a "trusted" user, which judging by the thirty or so I saw, means a "mega user" who pours themselves into the site, the criticism is thus outdated as no one can submit a review and have it be seen or factored in, it is hidden from sight even. I would suggest we update it, I don't know how critical people are of the new filtering, but at least we should update the current criticism to past tense? Revrant (talk) 00:18, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? Yelp has long used a review filter but I see no sign of any change along those lines. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:04, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

No, but I decided to browse all the restaurants in my city and the cities surrounding me, all reviews but a few from prolific users were completely filtered, and the FAQ cites a user must become attain some intangible "trusted" status they refuse to specify, which from what I've seen is just posting lots of reviews. Revrant (talk) 05:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

yelp Extortions and lawsuits are all facts

is wikipedia also getting paid by yelp now? how is this not neutral, these are simple facts which you can verify by reading the following links.

Many business owners have reported that yelp sales representatives contacted them, told them that if they pay yelp monthly fees, yelp can hide and delete negative reviews. When business owners refuse to pay yelp any monthly fees, their good reviews got deleted or "filtered". For example, Texas-based Cavalli Pizza even wrote on their own facebook page:"YELP has been unfair and removed 24 reviews all of which were 4 and 5 stars. But they keep calling us to advertise, and told us it would get better if we advertised."

• Yelp Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Running An "Extortion Scheme"
• yelp | Ripoff Report | Complaints Reviews Scams Lawsuits Frauds Reported
• Yelp will help you remove bad reviews…for a price.
• Yelp Accused of Five-Star Review Extortion
• Yelp Scam — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.19.47.3 (talk) 09:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Of the five sources you mentioned above:

1. A 2010 TechCrunch version of a story that's already in the article, sourced to a Wired story. Cavalli Pizza is not mentioned.
2. The Ripoff Report page for complaints against the company; such first-hand or anecdotal reports are not reliable.
3. A 2009 story about the alleged extortion. It's older than the Wired story used in the article, and it's from The Next Web, a blog that may not be reliable.
4. Here's the 2011 story about Cavalli Pizza, the apparent removal of good reviews, and the solicitation for advertising. However, it's in Eater: on the surface, it's a blog, but it also looks to be run more like a magazine, with editorial review of stories.
5. Yelpscam.com is a site soliciting people to join the class action lawsuit; it is not usable in the article as a source, unless it's about facts of this (new?) class action suit or basic information about The Coalition for Fair Reviews.

That's my evaluation of the sources. A little later, I'll have a proposed change to the text. —C.Fred (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The section already reflects some back-and-forth and compromise between drive-by editors that want the article to tell the WP:TRUTH about what a scam Yelp supposedly is, and other editors who wish to avoid a compendium of conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated allegations. Underlying this, these rumors are almost certainly untrue if stated in the farfetched and extreme form, that Yelp is committing extortion. So, how does a Wikipedia article cover unproven allegations about a company by its detractors? This question repeats itself on a number of articles about consumer-facing online services (e.g. Craigslist, Facebook, Groupon). One has to be careful when covering online web services not to give undue attention to the sub-genre of semi-reliable tech blogs, food blogs, and free weeklies, who drum up interest by promoting supposed scandals and controversies. Yelp in particular has been dogged for a few years by speculation that it operates as a sham to shake down businesses under threat of lowering their rating. This resonates with some local shop owners who disapprove of their Yelp listing. To date none of the claims has held water. The only thorough source on the matter is a poorly researched exposé in a local free weekly newspaper, the East Bay Express, that often engages in muckraking and advocacy journalism. The story is basically promoting rumors so it's hard to evaluate it on a scale of reliability. The article already devotes two sentences to the story, in a nuanced way that mentions that the story was written without endorsing it as true: The Oakland, California based East Bay Express published a 2009 story highlighting businesses that said that Yelp salespeople offered "to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses" by paying for advertising sponsorship contracts. The story claims that positive reviews appeared to be removed when the business declined to become an advertiser, a practice Yelp denies. A further two sentences are devoted to the class action lawsuit. One thing not (yet) mentioned in the article is that the suit was dismissed by a judge as speculative.[2] The plaintiffs were given 30 days to refile and I cannot find any coverage as to whether they did or did not, so probably they didn't and the suit is gone.

As a weight matter, we wouldn't normally cover a civil case against an internationally known company that didn't get past a preliminary motions to dismiss. Yelp has been involved in perhaps a dozen lawsuits that have been covered, mostly involving unhappy businesses suing reviewers (a few are mentioned in the article). Our purpose here as an encyclopedia is to explain what the sources say about the subject in a way that informs the interested lay reader what it's all about. Detailing every reliable source mention of a controversy or scandal gives an incorrect impression of things. There are thousands (probably tens or hundreds of thousands) of reliable sources that go into every conceivable detail of how merchants use Yelp, how consumers use Yelp, the company's business decisions, and lots of other stuff, and only enough room in the article for a few dozen of them. Instead, we summarize. The article as it stands is a fair summary of these allegations, and it already gives them proportionately more weight than the uncontroversial things about the company. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Based on Wikidemon's comments, it looks like there is sufficient coverage in the article already. I'm not convinced that more accusations by a business warrant further addition to the text. —C.Fred (talk) 18:53, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

" Texas-based Cavalli Pizza even wrote on their own facebook page:", isn't that a fact? you can find it on their own facebook. they are certainly not related to yelp. of course, the facts can be added to the article. there was no mention about how yelp asking business to pay monthly fee in order to remove bad reviews for businesses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.19.32.249 (talk) 22:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Cavalli Pizza is related to Cavalli Pizza, obviously—and that means they're a primary source (self-published source). This needs coverage in a secondary source before it can be added. —C.Fred (talk) 22:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

someone add this to the page's link. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/yelp-sued-for-alleged-extortion — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.34.154.6 (talk) 22:06, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

That source is already used in the article. - 02:14, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Criticism section is under-represented

I agree with the previous contributors who state that the criticism section of this article is under-represented. Yelp's practices have many people upset, so much so that an entire movement against Yelp is developing. You can find over 20 complaints posted by angry business owners just in the last month at a site called "Save Us From Yelp!" saveusfromyelp.com

I first became aware of Yelp when I posted a negative review of a record store I visited in Montreal, and Yelp.ca removed it - twice. (http://www.yelp.ca/biz/cheap-thrills-montreal) In fact it has been “filtered”. To see it you have to click a hard to see link, then enter a harder to see captcha - obviously they don’t want people to read the filtered reviews. Then I read the only remaining review, and it seems like something professionally done that you might find in a tourist brochure. I investigated a little further, and found that the same "reviewer" has posted dozens of glowing reviews for other Montreal businesses, mostly 5 stars and a few 4 stars. And just by coincidence, Yelp wants these same businesses to pay them for advertising sponsorship.

This wiki article on Yelp doesn’t do enough to disclose the company’s shady practices. I’m not aware of dozens of consumer complaints appearing on any website called Save Us From Facebook or Save Us From Google, nor of either of these companies getting sued for extortion. And by the way, I find it interesting that the individual who is trying to suppress these criticisms from appearing on the wiki page is from the same area, San Francisco, as where Yelp's head office is located. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.131.95.14 (talk) 02:17, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

If the Criticism section is under-represented, then please find some relaible source(s) to back up the statements you want to have included. Yes, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that Yelp removes reviews, but for a Wikipedia article you need to provide verification via evidence quoted or reported in a major national newpaper or magazine (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, SF Chronicle, etc.). Or a major and respected online news source such as Slate, Salon, Huffington Post. Blogs and complaint sites and social networking sites are not reliable sources for Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 05:38, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Number of employees

The number of employees is significantly higher than 150, and the citation for that claim is 4 years old. If someone finds a source with a more updated number, please fix!

RabbitSC (talk) 23:06, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Incredibly Poorly Written

Except for some of the more highly technical articles on "Wikipedia," this has to be the absolutely WORST article I've ever seen; my teachers in the fourth, fifth and my Jr. HS English teacher would have all given this a big, fat "F" and deservedly so.

The person or person who wrote this incomprehensible nonsense obviously didn't do very well in English let alone take some clues from basic journalism; you start off with "who, what, where, when, how and sometimes WHY" WITH WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT all in the lead; this lead explains NOTHING specifically about "Yelp" but it does go off on the tangent of what social media is.

If I were reviewing this article on "Yelp" I would rate it, at best, ONE STAR.

Satchmo Sings (talk) 12:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Credible references needed to corroborate original research

I removed references that are self published blogs from personal websites. They're no different from citing something said by some guy on the street. Cantaloupe2 (talk) 02:31, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I added them back. The OR tags were incorrect, as the statements were not OR. Some of those appeared to be reliable sources, others sourced the company itself for uncontroversial claims. Most of the stuff is googlable, so if in doubt it's better to simply improve sourcing. A bigger problem, much of the article was written in 2008, yet describes outdated information in the present (and future WP:CRYSTAL) tense. The company's current size, locations, features, usage, etc., would be helpful, using language such as "as of 2012... was" so it will not become obsolete. - Wikidemon (talk) 14:24, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

4square

Isn't foursquare a related product in terms of general idea and purpose? shouldn't it be added to see also secton? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.218.181.137 (talk) 19:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems somewhat related as they both have mobile apps with check-ins and a discovery function (discovering new places). But there are some differences too. Anyway, the best way to link articles about similar companies is to create a WP:CATEGORY or more rarely a WP:LIST, or else mention it in an article about the subject. For example, Yelp is listed in the article about review sites. The problem using a "see also" link is that it's hard to keep those lists straight (complete, accurate, formatted correctly) given the way wikipedia editing works. If you could find, say, 12 companies that were like Yelp you would have to add all of them here, and then add the same list to the other 11 articles, and then consider whether some should be added or left out because each company is a little different, etc. With categories it's much simpler, just add the category to the bottom of the article and the software does the rest when someone reads the article. Hope that helps. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:57, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

History

Hi. I've been coaching Yelp through a draft of their history in a public relations capacity. I wanted to introduce myself to any Talk page watchlisters and see if anyone was interested in collaborating on the article with me. Our 56-citation draft History is a lot to go through all at once and it's difficult to compare the two versions, so I thought maybe it would be easier to go through it a couple paragraphs at a time? Let me know what works best! CorporateM (Talk) 01:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

That's a lot! Sure, shoot. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Foundation

Below is a draft paragraph regarding how the company was founded and its early, unsuccessful project as an email-based referral site. A few notes with a focus on where my COI may be relevant:

• It has more detail on why/how it was unsuccessful instead of just "aborted": "After an aborted start as an email recommendation service" -> "The site didn't attract many readers or writers beyond the founders' friends and family and was difficult to use." + a screenshot to be added of the original failed service.
• Correction: David Galbraith isn't actually mentioned in the current citation[3], but the author of a GigaOm story says he is a cofounder - the author says: "if my memory serves me right."[4] I've replaced it in the draft with what I believe to be the company's story of origination according to much more reliable sources, like profiles in Fortune and Inc., about having trouble finding a local doctor and being funded to find an alternative to the Yellow Pages.
• Some general editorial improvements. I didn't feel Adzaar and Slide (not cited either) are relevant, though they may belong on an article about MRL Ventures if one was started. I condensed some of the details about funding.

Nothing too controversial - corrections, better sources and general editorial improvement. I trust Wikidemon and the community to keep us on the straight and narrow if anything I'm proposing is unfair or strays from the rules and extend my thanks in advance for the help! CorporateM (Talk) 13:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Draft of Early History

Yelp was founded by two former PayPal colleagues, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, at a ten-person incubator called MRL Ventures in 2004. After Stoppelman was having difficulty using the internet to find a local doctor, he and Simmons started investigating modern alternatives to the Yellow Pages. MRL Ventures founder Max Levchin gave them $1 million in funding to create the early Yelp where users could ask friends for recommendations for local services via email. The site didn't attract many readers or writers beyond the founders' friends and family and was difficult to use. Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that people were using one feature to write reviews without being prompted by a friend. Unsolicited review writing became the basis of the site’s re-launch in February 2005. References

I've got a few things, I'll try to get to them within the next day. - Wikidemon (talk) 00:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay. My standards here are a lot higher than the current state of the article, but why not?

• "at a ten-person incubator called MRL Ventures in 2004."

  This comes from the Inc. article cited at the end of the following sentence. That cite should be duplicated here if we keep that in, but it's not clear in context what "ten-person" means in the context of an incubator, nor does calling it this really establish what it was. this book goes into a little more detail. Although, like Idealab, it was called an incubator it was more of a Skunk Works or idea factory, a particular breed of incubator that only launched its own internally generated projects, not helping founders from outside. The personnel in MRL Ventures included Max Levchin, David Galbraith, Jared Kopf, Scott Bannister, Christina Brodbeck, Ken Brownfield, Russ Simmons, Yu Pan and Jeremy Stoppelman. That's nine, perhaps I missed some. All were either paid employees or entrepreneurs in residence. Anyway, the mention of 10 people is not terribly helpful in saying what MRL really was. Also, although I can't point you to a style guideline on this, it flows better to say "MRL Ventures, an xxxx" than "an xxxx called MRL Ventures"

• (removing David Galbraith).

  Although there is not one definitive reliable source describing his role, it's abundantly clear if you google around that Galbraith was heavily involved in the founding of Yelp, including coming up with the name (because he noticed the domain for sale). He apparently left early on after some kind of falling out. For example, Om Malik says so here and Stopppelman says so here. I believe that although these are not classic reliable sources, they are reliable for this proposition. However, none of these corroborate the claim that the idea arose from Galbraith's research into local search. Although I have my doubts about company creation myths, the Jeremy doctor thing is the best sourced.

• "[after the doctor thing] he [Stoppelman] and Simmons started investigating modern alternatives to the Yellow Pages."

  That's not actually what the source says, nor does it make perfect sense when phrased that way. The Inc. source is slightly breezy so I don't think we should adopt its phraseology, but it says that Levchin, not Stoppelman, had an investment interest in creating a new service that would replace the Yellow Pages. He charged Stoppelman and Simmons with creating one (the article does not say when), they brainstormed over lunch, pitched it to Levchin 30 minutes after lunch, and he funded it (not possible, the source is exaggerating) before dinnertime.

• (removing mention of Adzaar and Slide).

  I would put these back in, until and unless we have an article about MRL Ventuers some day. They establish some context for what MRL Ventures was. We can downplay it by putting them in a parenthetical

• "The site didn't attract many readers or writers beyond the founders' friends and family"

  Avoid contraction; also I think "friends and family" is irrelevant and slightly dubious (again, due to Inc. being breezy). I would simply say "The site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers."

• "using one feature to write reviews without..."

  Doesn't parse quite right. Should rephrase "using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without"

• "Unsolicited review writing became the basis of..."

  Avoid passive voice. Instead: "The site re-launched in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing."

• (removing funding info and company growth)

  I think funding information and company growth are relevant to understanding a startup company's growth, but they do interrupt the narrative flow. Conversely, although we're not Crunchbase it's useful in articles about VC firms to list their potfolio companies, just a matter of compiling and organizing that information. Let's table that issue and consider whether we want a separate subsection that mentions who the major investors were. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:54, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Between all of these comments, I'm thinking of something like:

Yelp arose (along with Adzaar and Slide) out MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects. In late 2004 Levchin mentioned one of his ideas, a new version of the Yellow Pages, to Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The two brainstormed over lunch about Jeremy's difficulty using the internet to find a doctor, then pitched Levchin shortly after on building a site where users could ask friends by email for recommendations for local services. That day Levchin agreed to invest $1 million in the project.

The Yelp name was chosen when one MRL staffer, David Galbraith, found the domain name available to purchase. The initial site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers. However, in an "a-ha moment", Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that an increasing number of users were using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without being prompted. They relaunched the site in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing."

- Wikidemon (talk) 08:54, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

You and I both chalked up Inc's portrayal to a bit of an epic-style of story-telling. Content produced by a company has a habit of sounding too official and in that regard I think this is much better. I had only read the one paragraph from the Giga Om story, so now that you point out there was a falling out, I appreciate your diligence in making sure we don't do anything that would appear out of sorts. The blog comments and Quora posts aren't RS', but they do help provide context. I think purchasing the domain is mundane, but coming up with the name is more significant.

If you're ok with it, I'd like to do some copy-editing of your draft and move the sources over. I still don't like the other MRL Ventures investments in there, because I haven't found any sources that mention them, but I won't be too much a bother over it. CorporateM (Talk) 16:24, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Pending any additional comments from Wikidemon, I'd like to request consideration of the following two paragraphs regarding how Yelp was founded. A couple small notes; I did add "local" back in before "doctor", put the image back in, removed the two other MRL venture funds and might a tweak based on the discussion above RE Galbraith. The rest is just copy-editing and adding cites back in. However, if you feel strongly about the two venture funds or any other changes, please go ahead! I'll tee up the early history next. Thanks so much for your help! CorporateM (Talk) 19:00, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Draft 2 based on Wikidemon's draft

Yelp was started out of MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects. In late 2004, Levchin brought up the idea of a new version of the Yellow Pages to Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The two brainstormed over lunch about Jeremy's difficulty using the internet to find a local doctor, then pitched Levchin shortly after on building a site where users could ask friends for recommendations for local services by email. That day Levchin agreed to invest $1 million in the project. MRL staffer, David Galbraith, came up with the name "Yelp." The initial site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers. In an "a-ha moment", Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that an increasing number of users were using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without being prompted. They relaunched the site in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing.

I'll wait a few days to see if a third person shows up to make the edit; if not I'll go ahead and do it. Meanwhile, next section? - Wikidemon (talk) 21:15, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Early history

Below is a draft of two additional paragraphs covering Yelp's early history, initial growth, funding and development. It buts up right against time period where several lawsuits and controversies ensue. CorporateM (Talk) 23:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Early history

The site's initial community was grown by throwing Yelp parties, where prolific reviewers, known as the "Yelp Elite," were invited. The company raised $5 million in venture funding in October 2005, which was used to expand to New York City, Chicago and Boston. Another $10 million in venture funding was raised in October 2006. The Yelp site had 12,000 reviewers in 2005, which grew to 100,000 in 2006. By 2008 it had fifteen million monthly visitors. In February 2008, Yelp raised another $15 million in funding. That year, Yelp added new features for business owners to manage their listings. Yelp sites were added for Canada in 2008, the United Kingdom in 2009, France in 2010, and in Spain and Australia in 2011. In August 2009, a Yelp iPhone app was released with a hidden Easter Egg feature called Monocle, that superimposed Yelp ratings onto the camera view of the iPhone. That December, Google entered into negotiations with Yelp to acquire the company for a deal thought to be worth more than $500 million, though Yelp and Google did not disclose an official amount. On December 21st, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman turned down the deal. The following month, Yelp raised $100 million in venture capital from Elevation Partners to fund an increase in sales staff. In January 2010, Yelp released "check in" features that put the company in competition with Foursquare. That June, Yelp worked with OpenTable to make OpenTable's restaurant reservation features accessible directly through the Yelp website. References

Okay, some thoughts.

1. ..."elite parties"... I think this is important to mention but some more context would be helpful. First, the elite parties were sponsored by Yelp's paying customers and usually held at their places of business. Being elite meant other things beyond just parties. People got promotional goods, status, recognition. I'm struggling to find sources for this, but the whole model was innovative for its time, and influenced the sites that came after to similarly confer elite status level to their most influential customers, a confluence of influencer marketing and gamification.[5][6][7][8] There were other ways of spurring growth of course. Yelp worked extensively with local merchants to encourage them to tell their customers to sign up and review them. They got lots of free passes and coupons for movies, restaurants, shows, and gave them out. The "People Love Us on Yelp" stickers were phenomenally successful too.[9] I don't know when or how Yelp made the decision to monetize from local business sponsorships but that's been the dominant model, and most revenue growth comes from direct sales. As an organization, after the earliest days Yelp was basically a mass of direct salespeople with a thin management structure for community, tech, etc. That's what the business / trade press might cover, although the popular press covers mostly the phenomenon of the site and its public features and activities.
2. I like the way the funding and growth is treated. If people want to know the exact source of funding they can read the linked articles. There would e no harm in spelling it out, but if so it should be comprehensive and not just mention one VC here and there. The growth stats for reviewers versus monthly visitors is incomplete and a little disjointed. It would be nice to find a growth trend or even graph for both that goes from start to finish. They probably exist somewhere.
3. The way the sentence is worded makes it sound like the monocle version was the first version of the iPhone app, but they had an earlier version with fewer features. The most important thing is that it's widely considered the first ever augmented reality mobile app.[10] Most of the sources say that Robert Scoble discovered it, but chances are he was tipped off.
4. Jeremy says he turned down google. Google says it called off negotiations because it didn't like the way Yelp was trying to negotiate by leaking things to the press. So there are conflicting accounts.[11] I'm not aware of any authoritative source on what really happened.
5. FWIW Yelp has had an on-and-off relationship with Opentable, MenuPages, and other compatible services over the years. Another important feature to mention is Yelp Deals, in competition with Groupon. Even though Yelp's not a major player it's a solid part of the revenue model.[12]

- Wikidemon (talk) 19:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Wikidemon. I numbered your comments so they would be easier to follow. I was thinking we would expand on the Yelp Elite in a "Community" sub-section, separate from History. For #2 we can add the VC names and probably create a chart ourselves if it's helpful. I'll read through the source material for #3-5 tonight/tomorrow and make changes as well. We've got Yelp Deals in the draft, it was just introduced later on, so it hasn't come down the pipe yet. CorporateM (Talk) 21:06, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Second draft (below) based on your feedback. I made a mental note to check back on some of the sources for a Community section later on and to see if Yelp has a growth chart we can use. I added the source for Deals to the full draft, though we haven't gotten to that part yet. I think everything else is in there, but let me know if I missed anything. The red text is new material. I also moved things around so it was by-topic (growth/funding/development) rather than strictly chronological. CorporateM (Talk) 02:17, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Draft 2 of early history

Yelp's early review community was grown in part through Yelp parties, which were held at local businesses looking to attract patrons. The Yelp Elite, a category of super-users chosen by Yelp, was created in 2005 to reward the best reviewers. The Yelp Elite were invited to parties and other special events. The Yelp site had 12,000 reviewers in 2005, which grew to 100,000 in 2006. In early 2007, Yelp introduced "People Love us on Yelp" stickers to raise awareness for Yelp. By 2008, the website had fifteen million monthly visitors. Three years after Yelp was founded, it was active in 24 cities. Website traffic almost double over a six month period starting in late 2007 and the number of reviews passed two million. Yelp, Inc. raised $5 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners in October 2005, which was used to expand to New York City, Chicago and Boston. Another $10 million was raised in October 2006 with Benchmark Capital, followed by $15 million with DAG Ventures in February 2008. In January 2010, Yelp raised $100 million in venture capital from Elevation Partners to fund an increase in sales staff. In 2008, Yelp added new features for business owners to manage their listings. Yelp sites were added for Canada in 2008, the United Kingdom in 2009, France in 2010, and in Spain and Australia in 2011. In August 2009, an update to the Yelp iPhone app was released with a hidden Easter Egg feature called Monocle, that superimposed Yelp ratings onto the camera view of the iPhone. It was considered the first augmented reality mobile app. That December, Google entered into negotiations with Yelp to acquire the company for a deal thought to be worth more than $500 million, though Yelp and Google did not disclose an official amount. Yelp and Google both claimed to be the ones that turned down the deal. Two sources close to the situation said the deal was interrupted by a counter-offer by Yahoo! for $750 million. According to the sources, Google chose not to match the counter-offer and Yelp's board and management team were split on which offer to take. In January 2010, Yelp released "check in" features that put the company in competition with Foursquare. That June, Yelp worked with OpenTable to make OpenTable's restaurant reservation features accessible directly through the Yelp website. References

Very nice. A little dry perhaps but very informative. It'll need wikilinks of course. Ready for the next one about scamming and extortion? - Wikidemon (talk) 02:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done per Wikilnks. I'll tea up the next couple paragraphs. CorporateM (Talk) 03:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Controversy

Next up is a couple paragraphs on the controversy with East Bay Express. It wouldn't be honest to substantially expand the other areas without covering this topic too. On the other hand, I would like to ask we merge and condense the current Controversy section here, per WP:Criticism. Leaning on editors like Wikidemon a bit here to make sure we're being fair and honest. CorporateM (Talk) 03:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Controversy

A February 2009 article in a Bay Area alternative weekly paper, Easy Bay Express, said it had interviewed six small business owners that claimed Yelp salespeople were offering to push down negative reviews if they purchased advertising from the site. Some business owners alleged that after refusing to advertise, positive reviews were removed and negative ones appeared. In February 2010, a lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles by a local vet that claimed Yelp offered to remove a negative review if the vet purchased advertising from Yelp. Nine businesses joined the lawsuit the following month. Yelp claimed the filtering of suspicious reviews is automated and employees are not allowed to alter them. In response to the ongoing allegations, in April 2010, Yelp added a feature that gave users access to reviews that were filtered by its pattern recognition software. It also stopped offering advertisers the ability to bring a positive review to the top position. The lawsuits were dismissed in October 2011, but new complaints arose again in September 2012. A California court found in 2013 that Yelp is not legally liable for the actions of its review filtering software. References

That looks fine. I think the single word heading "controversy" is too broad and could become a magnet for unencyclopedic or marginal material. Is there an adjective that could indicate that this section is specifically for complaints about alleged review-fixing (or maybe more broadly, the validity/accuracy/fairness of reviews and tactics of the sales team? - Wikidemon (talk) 17:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Yah... There are also other non-neutral headers in the current article like "Criticism of reviews," but no need to add more. My intention was for just a single "History" header, but now that you mention it, it is getting longer now and could use sub-heads, but maybe just 3 sub-heads rather than the 5 or 6 we're doing for Talk page review. I'll tee up the last History section. CorporateM (Talk) 20:01, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Recent history

Last one!! CorporateM (Talk) 20:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Recent history

Yelp started offering a local Deals service to compete with Groupon in April 2011. The deals service was extended to Android and iPhone apps in June. In August, the number of deals were halved and 15 salespeople were moved off the Deals service, due to increased competition and saturation of daily deal services. That September, Yelp agreed to participate in an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into allegedly anti-competitive behavior by Google. Yelp claimed Google Places was using Yelp content without disclosing to the user the source of the reviews. It also alleged Google favored Google Places over Yelp in search results. That November Yelp filed for an initial public offering. According to the filing, the site had reached 22 million reviews, 66 percent of which were written over the prior year. The filing also noted that despite a 79.9 percent increase in revenues that year, Yelp had yet to make a profit. The company held an IPO on March 2, 2012 at $15 a share and with a valuation of $898.1 million. Shares rose more than 60 percent to $24.50 on its first day of trading. In the September 2012 release of Apple's iOS 6, Yelp content was integrated into Apple's default mapping and directions app. The following month Yelp made an agreement with its largest competitor in Europe, Qype, to acquire the company for $50 million. The following year, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman reduced his salary to $1, being paid only through 665,000 in stock options that will vest over two years. Yelp also announced it was adding restaurant hygiene inspection scores from the health departments of New York and San Francisco to its restaurant listings. References

Hi Wikidemon. On a side note, an obvious COI editor "Bleazyusa" addeed some links to bleazy.com that should probably be reverted. CorporateM (Talk) 22:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

On this last section, here are some thoughts:

Apple Maps in iOS 6 are notable mostly for being a fiasco. I'm not clear on Yelp's role in that but it would help to expound.[13][14][15] Jeremy's option count and vesting schedule is TMI (plus, the source is not clear and the proposed text does not conform to the source). Best just say that he is being paid solely in stock options, which gets the main point across. I think the SF/NY health scores are a very minor feature but no harm there. There are probably some much more innovative / noteworthy features, but if you don't find any we can leave that up to other editors to find. Anyway, looks pretty good. Please realize that per Wikipedia rules I can't speak for anyone else or declare consensus, and that anyone and everyone (including me) could change stuff in the future. Still, if you have any issues or problems please feel free to comment here, on my talk page, or through any other Wikipedia channels. This is overall a substantial improvement to the article. Best, - Wikidemon (talk) 02:32, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Wikidemon. No worries. I already have some corrections/comments from Yelp's legal department and I hope other editors continue to improve the article. Your time is immensely appreciated. Many of the items you pointed out would have appeared as spin, though none was intended. So I appreciate you keeping us honest.

I've been updating the draft based on our revisions here and I think it's ready for article-space with one exception. I've been reading about the Apple/maps incident and I don't feel comfortable adding the appropriate commentary about a Yelp partner, so I'd like to kindly request you consider adding whatever is appropriate for this particular item. There's a summary of the controversy here and some sources that mention Yelp.[16][17][18] CorporateM (Talk) 17:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Requested tweaks

Some comments/corrections from Yelp's legal department have been forwarded my way. I am storing them here for now until I can research each one in reliable sources and make any suggestions that seem appropriate. However, anyone else is welcome to go through them as well if you choose to, or wait for me. CorporateM (Talk) 23:58, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

1. Yelp was actually founded by an MRL Ventures affiliate, MRL Web, LLC, rather than MRL Ventures itself
2. Yelp's first iPhone app was released in 2008
3. Suggest changing "vet" to "vetenarian hospital"
4. An additional class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco in March 2010 is missing
5. Should clarify that the lawsuits were consolidated before being dismissed as a group
6. They were dismissed based on the Federal Communications Decency Act (I think this is mentioned under "Controversy" and these two sections just need to be consolidated). Judge said the lawsuits were speculative.
7. It's stock was "Class A" common stock at IPO
8. Yelp stopped offering advertisers the "Favorite Review" option, to be more specific
9. Another lawsuit in 2011 was dismissed and they were made to pay Yelp's legal fees under anti-SLAPP laws.[19]

Sure, any of those that can be sourced. The anti-SLAPP decision is particularly interesting (that focus is more important than the fee award IMO). Anything material or potentially contentious (identity of founder possibly, another class action suit, class of stock) ought to just be left out per WP:OR if we can't find at least some sourcing for it. Incidentally, I'll revert this piece of unsourced commentary.[20] From experience, when brand new or anonymous editors makes a drive-by complaints like that it's pointless to engage; best to wait a day or so to make sure they've finished driving by before removing it. Wikidemon (talk) 19:52, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Wikidemon. I'll probably research the bullets this weekend at the latest. Consider me asking tepidly understanding WP:NORUSH, but if the first draft of the history is ready, do you think we can merge with article-space? It may not be "done" yet even in the near-term, but as Wikipedia is an indefinite work-in-progress... CorporateM (Talk) 22:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Suggesting a few tweaks to our first draft based on feedback from Yelp's legal department (see above):

• The iPhone app is mentioned in several other places, so it seems to make sense to add the date when it was first introduced. Suggest adding under History/Development something along the lines of: "In 2008, Yelp added new features for business owners to manage their listings,[25] and introduced its first iPhone app."

• Under the third paragraph of the Development section, suggest changing "vet" -> "veterinary hospital" to make it less ambiguous from war vets or the verb vet.

• Under the third paragraph after "joined the lawsuit the following month." would like to add a missing lawsuit: "A few weeks later, a San Francisco furniture store filed another complaint with the San Francisco Superior Court."

• In the fourth paragraph, suggest something like "The lawsuits were consolidated into a single class-action lawsuit that was dismissed by San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen. Chen ruled that Yelp's choices for which user reviews to display on the site are protected by the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields websites from being sued for publishing user-generated content." This is to merge the content under "Controversies" here; we should be able to eliminate the Controversies section after moving the last sentence of it somewhere else.

• A California court dismissed a case by a local dentist under anti-SLAPP laws, which protect communications that further discussions of public interest, and made the plaintiff pay Yelp's legal fees. I'm not attached, but I did notice the paying of fees was prominent in the source. Up to you Wikidemon.

• Under the fourth paragraph of Development, suggest changing "offering advertisers the ability to bring a positive review to the top position" -> "offering advertisers the 'Favorite Review' feature, which brings a positive..." Appears to be supported by the current sources and seems a valuable clarification to add the title of the feature.

I see from legal documents that come up in a Google search that MRL Web is likely the correct founder, but it's OR and Verification not Truth atm. I'll suggest they seek correction with Inc. or let it go. I think the section on the lawsuits may read defensively with these additions, though they also seem warranted. I'm leaning on impartial editors to keep us honest, but also think we may want revisit later to better summarize and re-write it, avoid UNDUE, etc.. Sincerely appreciative of your time reviewing our suggestions. CorporateM (Talk) 15:16, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

References