Bakersfield to launch its own Yelp-like site
Bakotopia’s Dan Pachecho told the crowd at NAA that Bakersfield is “rolling out a Yelp-like ‘Insider Guide’ that will contain profiles on local businesses” (source: The Local Onliner).
Bakotopia is a site from The Bakersfield Californian, a family-owned newspaper.
Pachecho … sees the Guide as a natural extension of a MySpace-like personal profile section. “If a user can create a profile, why can’t a restaurant? Why can’t people review that restaurant?”
One advantage that his company has over non-local rivals is that it has established multiple access points for Bakersfield residents, he adds.
I have written about Yelp here before. Why I think Yelp is super-smart:
- Good interface, easy to use
- Search functions work great
- Useful maps
- Real people writing real reviews
It looks clean and attractive too, so it’s a pleasure to spend time on the site.
Technorati tags: newspapers | search | online media | hyperlocal
Hey Mindy. Well, I’m not surprised that someone like you with “shared intellectual DNA” has noted what we’re doing with businesses. We’ve soft-launched the business feature, but are putting the finishing touches on it over the next few weeks before we market it widely. When we do, I hope you will check it out.
I’m very excited about expanding our social network(s) to include businesses. It brings community and commerce together in a natural way that just makes sense. We hope it emerges as a model for growing revenue and audience synergistically. We need to find more ways to do that in the news industry.
I’ll post something on my blog when we’re ready to publicly market the Inside Guide. -Dan
February 4, 2007 at 4:37 amThe Inside Guide is out. Find more information and links on this blog entry.
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