Community search site Yelp launches in Australia
US community-based search site Yelp launched in Australia today.
The site is a place for users to share their views on businesses and services in their local area.
Yelp entered the market through a partnership with Sensis’ Yellow Pages, the advertising and directory arm of Telstra.
Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of Yelp, said Yelp teamed up with Sensis because: “They provided us with their local listings data, which allowed us to launch.”
This is the final nail in the coffin for Community Engine. They have been trying to build an Australian Yelp for the last 4 years, but have failed due to confused senior management. Community Engine have been too slow to market. This is as far as they have got: https://byron.communityengine.com. Whilst this is a pretty picture, it is all smoke and mirrors. It does not work and it is not coming soon! I wonder how the investors will take the news?
Interesting that Suri on the iPhone 4S uses Yelp as its back end. Does that mean Australia will see a fully fledged Suri service finding local businesses like the US very soon?? we can only hope
One interesting thing to consider is Australia’s libel laws. Having run a site, a few years ago, doing restaurant reviews, I am well aware of how carefully we had to tread with user reviews. With restaurants threatening to suit on an almost weekly basis, we looked at Yelp and the freedoms they had for user comment with envy.
I hope we’ve moved on in the last four or so years to allow more freedom. The power of Yelp is the user voice.
This service looks quite cool. it also links up directly with your facebook account and tells you who else you know that has joined up to the site. Only thing was I tried to join up by putting in my email, DOB and facebook password it rejected me – YELP!
Yelp have jumped on the sea to Oz. Other than community engine, what other sites could compete? Yellow, True local…? Who is their competition locally..?
arrgggh: “over the sea…”
The competition is between Yelp, Google Pages and True Local. It is a land grab, with each trying to get the most social content to lock in a user base. Community Engine’s constant flip flopping meant they never even got in the race…..