Over the last couple years, there’s been a huge surge in the suite of online services referred to collectively as ‘local’. There’s Facebook Places, which prompts users to check-in and claim deals. There’s Google Places, which recently launched its own check-in feature and also aggregates reviews from a variety of online service. And of course there’s Foursquare, which popularized the check-in model in the first place and recently launched a new Explore feature.
But despite all of this new competition, Yelp — which has been focused on local since 2004 — is still growing at a clip pace. Today the company has surpassed 50 million monthly unique users (as reported by their internal Google Analytics), up from 46 million the month before. And they have a total of 17 million reviews for venues around the world. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says that the service is seeing a faster rate of growth for both contributions (reviews) and users than it has historically— in Q1, users wrote 2 million reviews, while most quarters average 1 million. In other words, even if some of these other services are gaining traction, it isn’t hurting Yelp.
To compliment its directory of user-submitted reviews (and to compete more directly with the aforementioned services), the company has launched its own local deals product and check-ins, though it’s still best known for its local reviews.
On a related note, here’s a video Yelp just shot about its most recent Hackathon. And if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to check out our tour of Yelp’s office on TC Cribs.
But despite all of this new competition, Yelp — which has been focused on local since 2004 — is still growing at a clip pace. Today the company has surpassed 50 million monthly unique users (as reported by their internal Google Analytics), up from 46 million the month before. And they have a total of 17 million reviews for venues around the world. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says that the service is seeing a faster rate of growth for both contributions (reviews) and users than it has historically— in Q1, users wrote 2 million reviews, while most quarters average 1 million. In other words, even if some of these other services are gaining traction, it isn’t hurting Yelp.
To compliment its directory of user-submitted reviews (and to compete more directly with the aforementioned services), the company has launched its own local deals product and check-ins, though it’s still best known for its local reviews.
On a related note, here’s a video Yelp just shot about its most recent Hackathon. And if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to check out our tour of Yelp’s office on TC Cribs.
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