Yelp

Information: Jonathan Moore



Start
  • Founded in 2004 on Mission Street in San Francisco by ex PayPal employees
  • Funded over lunch with cofounder of PayPal giving them $1 million
  • Started their initial idea from there



Trough of Sorrow
  • Initial attempt was not a major success
  • Changed idea once they saw a trend among their user base
  • They changed from reviews that were solicited to unsolicited
  • This redesign quickly led to a major increase in active users



Growth
  • Grew locally in San Francisco at first with first major features about Yelp being published in 2006/2007
  • Expanded out to other major cities such as New York and Seattle
  • However, in 2011 Yelp was still not breaking profit
  • They kept expanding worldwide - Australia

 IPO
  • Yelp on March 2, 2012 priced their IPO at $15 per share which was above the estimates by other firms
  • However, profit was still an issue

Yelp and Google
  • Yelp and Google have had some struggles
  • Google bought out Zagat in 2012 and Yelp argued that Google prioritized themselves over Yelp - keeping business down
  • Settled in court - anti-trust case not pursued


Other Controversies
  • Have had many allegations from small business owners that Yelp can harm them
    • Accuse Yelp of harming them as one bad review can tank their sales
    • Fear angry users may purposefully do this

 Talk
  • Have attempted to remedy problem with Yelp Talk
  • Allows for users to ask questions about a location - open conversation
  • If something comes up multiple times, Yelp can add that information to description

Sources

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)