Yelp has become one of those few websites that begs the question “what did I do before this site existed”? Yelp is a community oriented site where anyone can rate and review businesses, restaurants, theaters, even doctors. Integrated with Google Maps, it has become a great tool for finding highly rated local businesses. I first used Yelp to learn what people had to say about restaurants I wanted to try. After discovering a few places that I never would have otherwise, I started writing reviews on Yelp. Now, I use Yelp in my home city of Boston and also when I am planning what to do/where to eat/where to shop when I am traveling.

Lots of people question the accuracy of reviews on Yelp compared to ‘professional’ reviews. Reviews are largely subjective and opinion based; whether or not they are written by professionals is irrelevant. With professional reviews, like a travel guide, Zagat, or even Phantom Gourmet, we are normally given a well written review, often using a consistent set of criteria to evaluate. With Yelp, people write whatever they want, however much they want, and probably the only thing consistent about it is 1-to-5 star rating. They are certainly not all well-written, and I don’t “trust” the reviews more than I would those of a professional. So why do I use Yelp? I am given many people’s opinions and experiences on a huge selection of businesses, where with the pros I am given one or very few people’e opinions on a very limited selection of businesses.

Tangential to Yelp’s ‘review-based’ core is the Yelp community. You can make people your “friends” on Yelp, you can compliment people’s reviews, and you can give people quick ratings on whether their review is useful, funny, or cool. There are also events for local Yelpers. You can choose to utilize the community features or not, up to you, though the community moderators will encourage you to participate by adding you as a friend or complimenting your writing. Personally, I am there for the reviews, though I do use the “friends” feature to track people who seem to have similar tastes to mine, and I will also give a compliment to someone who’s review was very good or encouraged a successful visit to the business.

Yelp is being questioned for implementing a community-management-system where people are paid to jumpstart communities by being the local moderator or going and writing reviews. It’s good to ask the questions BusinessWeek asked, as transparency is important, but does paying people to write reviews or keep up the community really diminish the value of Yelp? They aren’t getting told what to say (at least I hope not!), they are getting told to write more. Does that really break down the social reviewing system? Building a community is work, staying on top of the content is work, and though it isn’t hard work for most of us, going out to dinner or shopping or visiting businesses is time consuming. If Yelp wants to pay people to do that, good for them for being concerned about flourishing their communities.

I feel that I’ve gained a great deal from Yelp these past few months. I have learned about interesting restaurants and shops, and I now have a place to vent my frustrations or sing the praises of businesses I’ve encountered. I look forward to more Yelping in 2007, and if you are on Yelp, let me know.