What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unless what happens in Vegas is that a glass-encased, concave hotel creates a "death ray" of concentrated sunlight and burns a guest. This is something everyone should know about.
A French tourist slipped off the edge of the Grand Canyon while taking pictures and fell 75 feet. But he survived! Now he has a great story to tell, and "Falling Into the Grand Canyon" has a Yelp review. [AP]
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.
Facebook had its third alarming bug in as many weeks, when a security researcher showed how a hostile website could obtain your Facebook information via Yelp. The hole is supposedly fixed, but then so were the prior two.
Zagat's strategy for its losing battle against foodie blogs and user-generated restaurant review sites: Claiming to be kindreds. Nina Zagat says the Zagat Survey was crowd-sourcing before it was cool. Yelp : Zagat :: Charles Darwin :: Alfred Wallace Russel. Who? Exactly. [HuffPo]
Yelp has surrendered. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced his local-reviews site will stop selling merchants the ability to select "favorite reviews," which push negative feedback further down profile pages. So now how will Yelp make money?
Welcome to the ultimate distillation of all the most evil social networking practices to have emerged over the past couple of years: Unvarnished, a website where complete strangers can set up your "profile" and mock you before potential employers.
With the other Elevation Partners, singer Bono invested in Palm, an analyst dartboard; Yelp, a class-action magnet; and Forbes and Move.com, both financially bulldozed. He might be our "worst investor," but Bono's financial blues album should be a hit.
The last thing Yelp needs right now is a public imbroglio with an upset internet luminary. But the local-reviews website sure has one, on top of many new lawsuits from merchants and an embarrassing tiff with Google.
A California veterinarian filed this federal class-action complaint against the online-review site Yelp yesterday.
A Long Beach, Calif., veterinarian has filed a federal class-action complaint against the online-review site Yelp, claiming it's a shakedown operation that will remove negative consumer reviews for cash.
The hottest fantasy in Silicon Valley involves a big, hot... tech bubble. Facebook and Yelp supposedly want one, so they can IPO in 2010; even Penthouse publisher FriendFinder Networks wants to go public, despite a sex harassment scandal.
There's some amusing finger-pointing going on in the aftermath of the Google-Yelp affair (which, like any affair, may just be in remission).
• Diane Sawyer's World News debut lifted the newscast's ratings a bit. [LAT]
• As for Sawyer's performance last night, some critics weigh in. [NYT, WP, BG]
• Chris Albrecht, who served as HBO's chief executive until he was fired for pulling a Chris Brown on his girlfriend, is now in charge of Starz. [DH, NYT]
• The…
• Diane Sawyer made her debut this evening as anchor of ABC's World News; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the night's big attraction. [AP]
• Avatar pulled in $73 million at the domestic box office (and $232 million worldwide), although it would have made more if it hadn't snowed. [LAT, NYT]
• Yelp walked…
Local review repository Yelp walked away from Google's $550 million acquisition offer this weekend. [TechCrunch]
• Charlie Gibson signed off as anchor of World News for the last time tonight. He's bidding goodbye to ABC News after a 34-year run. [ABC News, AP]
• More advertisers are fleeing from Tiger Woods; Tag Heuer is the latest. [NYP]
• The New York Times says its newsroom layoffs are done with. [Gawker, NYO]
• Twitter was…
Google is more likely than not to buy Yelp, say news reports. Which raises one glaringly obvious question: Will Google exacerbate or correct the local review site's worst tendencies, which have brought extortion allegations, porny bacchanals and physical violence?
At Yelp, every review is a chance for free drinks, every email a chance for distasteful punning — and every company party a chance to leer, spank and orgy out. Judging from the pictures, 2009's holiday bash was no exception.
Yelp couldn't have guessed one of its reviewers might end up in a vicious wrestling match with a store owner, right? Wrong: the owner had visited Yelp HQ the day before the fight, been ignored, then turned away.
