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Social review sites require a critical mass of users to be successful. Nobody will want to write reviews for a site that doesn't have a significant user base, a

Social review sites require a critical mass of users to be successful. Nobody will want to write reviews for a site that doesn't have a significant user base, and conversely no-one will visit a site that doesn't have many reviews. Be prepared to spend a lot on user acquisition. It's going to be cost-prohibitive. Also, think about the following: What prevents Yelp from implementing some or all of the changes you outlined? Do you think your tweaks would sufficiently differentiate your service from Yelp? Yelp is still losing money. The Premium Service you mentioned sounds like another attempt at monetizing the site. What would you do to be more profitable than Yelp?

palidanx 13y ago
In my opinion, I think Yelp can't really implement some of the algorithm changes because it would radically affect all of the ratings across the board. Also for changing the review structure (one text box), that probably most likely wouldn't change. I think the tweaks would differentiate the service from Yelp, but you do have a super valid point about the cost of user base acquisition. As for monetizing the site, I'm hoping (again laying out a business assumption that may be faulty), that businesses would want to subscribe to a service for a low cost say like $5/month to get customer feedback to help improve their bottom line. It does kind of assume businesses would listen to the customer though.