Yelp.com Friendly Referrals

TECHCRUNCH BLOG -- Oct 5 -- Yelp (1,5 million uniques/mo) took $10 million in Series B funding from Benchmark. Yelp specializes in local reviews and competes with Judy's Book which raised $8 million from Mobius, Ignition and Ackerley last year. FULL ARTICLE @ TECHCRUNCH BLOG

Mark Brooks: Yahoo is moving differentiating itself from Google by focusing on social search. Sites like Yelp and Judy's Book are trying to bottle the 'friendly referral' in essence. Online dating services such as Engage, and GreatBoyfriends are also trying to provide 'friendly referrals.' Successful unisons between internet dating sites and social networking are non-existent. Connectors won't connect when there is a real and apparent commercial agenda, which is why sites like Yub.com and FriendFinder's internet dating meets social networking (Q3/Q4 2003) services never took off. The best internet dating sites can hope for is getting feedback/testimonials from other users.