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This is a follow-up post to an earlier entry I wrote back in on March 21, 2010, titled Trouble with Yelp. It was about Yelp being sued for manipulating reviews and pressuring businesses into buying advertisements with them. Last week, Yelp announced some changes in its policies. The first change they made was to start showing all reviews, even those
The lawsuits, indicate that businesses who do not agree to pay Yelp to advertise on their websites have had favorable reviews removed from Yelp. If this was just one report, I would toss it off as sour grapes. However there have been a smattering of similar complaints across the country. The story is basically the same, the company in question was getting mostly good reviews on Yelp. They then get a call from Yelp offering them the opportunity to buy monthly advertisement when they decline the offer, their favorable reviews were removed or dropped off greatly.
The first difference that I noticed was Gowalla allows you to post and view pictures of a location, that other users have posted. With Foursquare there are no pictures, but people do leave tips. These are great if you are going somewhere new and want to learn more about it before you go. You can also check nearby tweets and see what is happening around you with Foursquare. Foursquare allows you to get pings from your friends if they are nearby. I didn't see any way to ping someone if they are nearby on Gowalla I also noticed that on Foursquare you can text, call, email, send a tweet or facebook connect to a friend as long as they included that information in their profile when they signed up. On Gowalla you can only post a comment or tweet someone. Foursquare also allows you to mark a place as closed or incorrectly placed. I like this option, I hate looking forward to going somewhere only to get there and find its no longer in business. I didn't see anything in Gowalla that allowed you to do that. Both apps give out badges or stamps for meeting certain goals. I do like the Trip activity on Gowalla, the idea is they suggest places to go in an area or city and then you mark them off as you go, sort of like a scavenger hunt. Unfortunately, their idea of nearby seems to be anything within a 1,000 miles. Gowalla also offers challenges, like check into X number of tech startups or check in at ten or more coffee shops are just some examples. Foursquare doesn't have anything like this.
Heavy into planning for SXSW the show goes on the road for about 20 days starting with Thursdays show. Lots of exciting things in the pipeline, we made a major announcement today over at blog.blubrry.com getting our podcast communities ready for the revolution / evolution of the website. Details to all of you as soon as I can put the
I was rummaging through my photos and videos the other day and realized something. There is no more six degrees of separation. I have met people in the last year that have in fact hob-nobbed with the celebs. I have Friends on Facebook being friends with other friends of facebook - And I don't even know how they know each
If you take pictures and store them online you are probably using Flickr. For most people it's the perfect option, it's free or low cost. They post pictures, for their friends and family to see and there are no problems. However, when things go wrong or there is a problem, especially in the area of censorship Flickr often reacts arbitrarily and with weak customer service response.