Facebook: new features coming Wednesday
Facebook has just invited us to an event on Wednesday afternoon at which the company “will provide an update on the service’s features and products.”
Sounds like a product launch, and Facebook is likely to unveil some features that will help it defend its turf from Google’s imminent social networking push.
At the top of the list of features Facebook watchers are anticipating: Places. Read more
Yelp: Bonjour, la France!
Want to find the best beret shop in Paris, or the finest crepes in Avignon? Now you can turn to Yelp for those answers. The popular user reviewed local directory just launched in France with its first non-English site.
The new site continues Yelp’s gradual international colonisation. The San Francisco company’s first cross border foray came more than a year and a half ago, when it launched in Canada. Early last year, Yelp came to the UK, and then opened shop in Ireland.
But the pace of new offerings looks set to pick up. “We will continue to roll out in Western Europe in the months ahead,” said Yelp chief operating officer Geoff Donaker. Read more
Yelp shifts course in face of class action suits
Yelp has bowed to pressure from disgruntled small business owners and is making changes to its popular reviews platform.
In the wake of three class action lawsuits that accused Yelp of extortion, chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman today announced a series of changes to the site and the formation of a new small business advisory council.
The most dramatic change is that advertisers will no longer be able to choose the featured review that had appeared at the top of their business’ page. This was prime real estate, and undoubtedly one of the most compelling reasons businesses would advertise in the first place. Read more
Yelp sued for “extortion”
Local reviews site Yelp is facing some unflattering reviews of its own service.
In a class action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, the red-hot startup is accused of unfair competition and what amounts to extorting small businesses.
The plaintiff in the suit, an animal hospital in Los Angeles, alleges that after negative reviews about its business appeared on Yelp, sales representatives from the company called and said that for $300 per month, they could make the ads disappear.
Don’t be surprised if this sounds familiar. In a lengthy article last year, the East Bay Express leveled similar charges against the company. But in an interview with the FT, Yelp chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman flatly denied the claims. Read more
Yelp gets major investment from Elevation Partners
It was only last month that Yelp was almost Googled. The local reviews site came a breath away from inking a $500m deal to sell itself to Google, but for reasons still unknown, the deal ultimately fell apart.
The company, it seems, is not looking back. Today Yelp announced an investment of up to $100m from Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that counts U2 frontman Bono among its directors. Read more
Yelp turns down Google’s half billion dollar bid
It seems that a half billion dollars was not enough. That’s the price Yelp, the local reviews site, was set to fetch on Friday as it entered into late stage negotiations with Google. But last night TechCrunch reported that the deal had fallen apart.
Perhaps news of the imminent deal attracted new bidders to the table, but it’s not yet clear what caused the last minute scuttling. Read more
MySpace does local business, a la CitySearch
MySpace is moving to the neighbourhood.
The social networking giant today announced a deal to emphasise searches of local restaurants and the like, with reviews of those businesses by a user’s friends getting prominent billing. Read more
TrustedPlaces goes mobile
The success of Yelp (which is very popular, if not profitable), has drawn attention to the local user-generated review site as a potentially viable business model. Indeed, with millions of small businesses looking for new customers (and presumably willing to advertise), accurate, comprehensive and trustworthy local directories are invaluable services for companies and customers alike.
So when Yelp introduced its London site in January, it signalled its intention to attract advertising from a chunk of the city’s 300,000 local businesses. Other similar sites were already active in London, and now one local competitor, TrustedPlaces, is trying to outflank Yelp before it gains traction. Read more
Yelp rejects claims of extortion
Yelp has won fans around the globe by providing a neutral platform where users can share reviews of local businesses. If a Vietnamese sandwich shop makes the best banh mi around, reviewers will rave and send more customers that way. If a kosher deli’s pickles are stale, reviewers will say as much, and other readers will steer clear.
But what if it wasn’t users, but Yelp’s own advertising team that determined the balance of — and in some cases wrote — the reviews that make up the meat of the site? Worse, what if Yelp’s advertising reps punished businesses that refused to advertise by the deleting positive reviews and promoting negative ones?
These are the claims being leveled against Yelp in a raft of recent articles. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
