Yelp at Commonwealth Club

The other day, my bf and I went to the Commonwealth Club for the first time ever. I'd been meaning to attend events there for quite a while but never got around to it. What finally got me off my butt to go? The founders of Yelp were speaking.

I was quite excited to go to this event, as my imagination along with the program description billed it as a visionary talk about the future of marketing and how Yelp is leading the way in empowering consumers and really letting their voices be heard using the power of the Internet, and the way Yelp channels advertising dollars into things like free food/wine/events for targeted consumers, providing more value for BOTH businesses AND consumers.

Oops, I think most of that was all in my head. I was a bit disappointed with the event, which turned out to be a question and answer session that didn't have much of any new-to-me information or anything visionary. The format and questions were a bit uninspired and pedestrian and the Yelp founders just didn't have much energy or that much to say.

I did learn that Yelp was almost called Yocal, which sounds almost exactly like "yokel", which was rather amusing. Imagine trying to get people in San Francisco or New York or anywhere else to call themselves "Yocals". Yeah, right. The person who thought of Yelp was so convinced of the idea that they purchased the domain name for $5000, managed to sell the founders and others involved on the name and then transfered the name to them for the same price of $5000. Good call.

I also learned they spent twenty minutes pitching the idea of Yelp to their first investor, who then gave them a million dollars to get started. Nice! I want both friends like that and the persuasive power to get them to give me a million dollars after a 20 minute pitch. I can be pretty tenacious...I bet I could get much more than a million if I only knew the right people.

Their business plan seems very sound and seems to have been executed almost flawlessly, but I also learned that Yelp's elite stuff and the parties/events were more like an afterthought. Kind of like "we like to party, and hey people want to give us free stuff. We can meet these crazy people that actually want to be Yelpers, have a party and businesses will PAY FOR IT." Geez, people just want to throw money and free stuff at these guys...I want to rub up against them just to see if some of that mojo will rub off on ME. Actually, from party pics I have seen, a lot of people (well, mostly women) want to rub up against them...but what is really interesting is that I think their whole Elite program is what really makes Yelp special and sets it apart from any other similar online consumer rating service (although Amazon just started something similar for products in a program called Vine.) Without the Elite program, Yelp is just another site to rate stuff, although one might argue it is designed better than the others.

And that's it...that's basically everything new I learned. Oh except maybe that for businesses like dentist and doctor offices and hair stylists, Yelp has the power to give them more business than they can possibly handle. Be careful who you give a great Yelp review to if they provide you with a regular service like that...you may find there is a wait list to get in next time you want to make an appointment!

Although I was disappointed a bit by the Yelp talk, I did have a great week with Yelp in general. After the Commonwealth Club Q&A thing, we found a great restaurant called Salt House and managed to get a seat without a reservation, then the next day one of the founders (Jeremy) sent me a compliment (my first "great writer" compliment) on Yelp saying how great my Salt House review was. Wow, a compliment from a founder! Well, to be fair it looks like he makes a point to send out a few compliments a day...but still I was thrilled. Then I got a ROTD (review of the day) for my review of Golds Gym, which garnered me some more compliments. Finally, my week culminated with a woman who I have secretly been a fan of on Yelp for some time sending me a friend request. Yeah okay, if you don't Yelp and secretly worship a few of the really good reviewers you probably can't appreciate that at all. So go Yelp already...try it, you'll like it!

Now, if only Amazon was that easy. I have been trying to increase my ranking on Amazon, and instead it's going DOWN. I think part of what I need is just time, now that I've figured out as much as possible HOW they give people their rankings.

Oh yeah, and my IMVU ranking, too. IMVU developers now have "Tiers", and to be the top tier (7) you have to have a perfect score of 21, and I have a score of 19 because I don't have enough forum posts (yes, part of your ranking as a developer or "content creator", in this silly system, is based on how often you post in the forums) so I only have 1 point out of a possible 3 in forum posting. Probably easy to remedy as long as I just remember to go back to the forums and post a few times EVERY DAY. I should be a perfect 7 next time they recalculate, unless they make other adjustments.