Employee Who Complained About Not Earning Enough Money To Buy Food Is Swiftly, Savagely Fired From Yelp
When you can’t force your employees to starve for your company, the next-best thing is to leave them jobless, apparently.
Google Is on Trial for Being Evil
The Senate is about to debate whether Google is evil. The search giant's competitors, including Yelp, have come out swinging, and they seem to have a good case.
Yelp's Sex Bunny Doll
A skanky mannequin has been discovered in the San Francisco headquarters of Yelp. The doll is supposed to represent a Yelp user, but she also makes the perfect mascot for the self-consciously trashy local ratings site itself.
Bachelors of Silicon Valley Remind Ladies What They're Not Missing
The Nob Hill Gazette, a San Francisco "society" publication, has come up with a list of area eligibles, including a wife beater and more than one gay man. Hard to be a straight woman here!
T is for Twitter, which turned blogging small
Twitter, the 140-characters at a time blogging service, was shaped by its founder's dry, understated sense of humor. The company, not to mention the service, seems to be a sort of Silicon Valley inside joke that, improbably, Ev Williams and his fellow Twitterers have managed to play on the rest of the world. For…
Gavin Newsom complains about his Yelp rating
Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Nish Nadaraja, marketing director of the local listing site, sat down with San Francisco's preternaturally hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom. Newsom agreed to the meeting in order to convince Yelpers he's "more hip than the 3.5 stars makes me appear." Before they lobbed him softball…
RedEnvelope failure frees up SoMa space
The likely closure of troubled online retailer RedEnvelope has a benefit for space-hungry startups near its SoMa headquarters at 149 New Montgomery. Yelp and Slide are among the rapidly expanding companies in the neighborhood. I asked Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman if he was going to swoop in on the space. "I wish…
Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (…
More PayPal Mafia mugshots
Thanks to commenter yarbles, we were alerted to evidence of two more members of the PayPal Mafia posing, like YouTube founder Jawed Karim, in mafioso costumes. Pictured, above, Yelp cofounders Russell Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. (Stoppelman's the one with the fake mustache. At least, we hope it's fake.) Any more…
One addendum to tonight's activities: Yelp's pretty-boy founders, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons, will take an unusually serious turn and speak at the Commonwealth Club tonight at 6 p.m. [Yelp]
Lotus Vodka offers release from the tech scene
A tip for those of you trying to mingle with successful entrepreneurs and VCs: Attend more than just the standard tech meet-and-greets. The people who are really in a position to help you with your startup never go to them anyway. So where to go instead? Check out events like last night's Lotus Vodka release party…
Rugged Michael Stoppelman
Michael Stoppelman, brother of Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, is in no danger of being called a manly-man. The Google coder and occasional male model is apparently competing for the wussy title of BlissGuy, in a contest held by swanky Bliss Spa. (The winner becomes the "face" of Bliss' soon-to-be released men's line, a…
