Social Review Site 1

For my practicum project, I will be looking at the social review site Yelp. According to Wikipedia, Yelp is "a social networking, user review, and local search web site" with more than 54 million monthly unique users worldwide. Basically, it is a site with listings of establishments (bars, restaurants, other services) sorted by location, category, etc. Users can create profiles, write reviews, make friends, and check in.

I had used Yelp a little before, so I used my previously-existing profile linked with my Facebook account. I then got to work exploring the site. You can look for places either by searching or browsing; both methods give you results within your specified area (I used Madison). You can sort places by average review score, most reviewed, price, proximity to you, and a host of other options.

Now to the meat of the site: the reviews themselves. Yelp lets anyone with an account write a review of anywhere, so as expected the reviews are quite a grab bag. I looked at reviews for Paul's Club on State and found posts ranging in length from several well-thought-out paragraphs to a few bullet points ("1 star for strong drinks. 1 star for fun jukebox. 1 star for Christmas lights. 1 star for the giant tree in the middle.").

One helpful feature is that you can click on a reviewer's name and see all of their reviews, so you can see what kind of places they go to and what they think of different places - hopefully from this one can determine which reviews are most helpful to them.

I look forward to continuing to explore Yelp throughout the semester. Maybe it'll even influence some of my own eating/drinking expeditions.