Results tagged “yelp”

Back when antediluvian diners sought opinions without the help of the Internet, Tim and Nina Zagat built a restaurant survey and ranking empire, which grew into a sprawling international family of guides on everything from dating to dumping. Just before the financial collapse really got nasty, they tried to sell the whole enterprise for $200 million, and are rumored to have turned down offers as high as $100 million. Today, the Post finds the Zagats in deep weeds, largely due to competitors like Yelp, which now boasts more than 7 million U.S. visitors per month with reviews on all sorts of things, including Zagat! By comparison, Zagat's website, which requires a $25 annual fee, averaged just 270,000 unique visitors last month. The company laid off 16 people, and the Zagats have given up trying to sell it. As one Yelper opines, "If Zagat was the bomb, [Yelp] wouldn't exist, so thanks for sucking so bad, Zagat. I almost was forced to go to Chinese food in Chinatown due to an out-of-town colleague who had armed himself with Zagat and biblical notions of self importance... In the end, I won and we ended up at a real restaurant that didn't have to pay for a review." Well, not exactly.

Yelp, the influential San Fransisco-based website that gives every Tom, Dick and Harry a forum to criticize everything from plastic surgeons to restaurants, has agreed to let small businesses publish their responses to criticisms on the site. Previously, businesses owners could only contact their haters directly or—more controversially—pay Yelp to bury negative reviews. But starting next week, businesses like this SF pizza restaurant will no longer be reduced to ironically printing quotes from bad reviews on their T-shirts. Come Monday, according to the Times, they'll be able to tell their side of the story of restaurants such as Otto Pizzeria, about which one Yelper opines: "The best part of the meal was when we walked outside and realized that we had just escaped HELL!"

Today the Times takes a look at the obsessive lifestyles of Yelp nerds, making some of them famous in the process, like local secretary Nina Cheung, 30, who's been "Yelp Elite" for three years. It doesn't just happen, people. Her advice to aspiring Yelpers: "You have to be there to review, not just to hook up." All Cheung's friends are Yelpers, and, as one user puts it, "It’s kind of like a cult, except instead of Kool-Aid we drink alcohol." And Megan Cress, who says she "networks for a living," became one of the site's biggest stars by reviewing the plastic surgeon who enlarged her breasts and posting a picture of her torso in a bikini: "If your wife, mom, sister, or girlfriend are looking for a nice new rackjob or some reconstructive surgery, and they want to avoid hacks and frauds, this doctor is the real deal. He is amazing!" Thank you Yelp—for once Mom won't be getting the same old boring soap basket for Christmas.