What Yelp did better than Judy's Book

I have not yet had the good fortune of meeting Jeremy Stoppelman but when I do I think I'll say -- nice game....and I'll mean it.  Jeremy and his team have done a nice job and did the following things better than Judy's Book (my company):

• Yelp focused on a younger demographic : we were focused on the soccer mom and Yelp focused on the younger twenty something generation. When it comes to user generated content (and social networks), it turns out that the younger the consumer the better! There's a reason Myspace is filled with teenagers: younger people feel more comfortable contributing and sharing online then their older counterparts. It's a generational comfort with technology thing....plus they have more time.
• Yelp focused on the restaurant category first: they had yelp doggie bags in San Francisco that they gave out as a promotional item. I'm not sure how successful that promotion was (i.e. I don't beleive they do it anymore)but it reveals that they understood that the restaurant category was where consumer willingness to write reviews, consumers search activity, and consumers daily life converged to meet local search.
• Simply put, they out-marketed us. They managed from early on to make their customers feel loved. They were the first site (amongst Judy's Book, Yelp and Insider Pages) to focus on getting consumer photos up on their site. This was a very powerful marketing tool. They were aggressive at experimenting with parties and alcohol and building an offline community with their community. They made joining yelp a bit of a fraternity/sorority....in a good way. Their marketing efforts for a small company were better than ours.

I still have lots of questions for Jeremy about how he turns his site into a money making business. That said, Jeremy and his team have a good game and have the best shot at executing on the original idea of a community directory. 
As Judy's Book evolves and relaunches this quarter, you'll see that we're headed in a different direction than we were previously. We've ceded the directory business to other companies, including Yelp.  We didn't do this because Yelp won (though, they were getting more consumer traction)  -- but rather because we grew highly skeptical of the community directory business direction as the basis for a successful profitable business.

Judy's Book's new direction includes a real revenue model -- and a different set of challenges.  I feel confident that we learned lots of lessons about user generated content, local search, and business in general that will help us succeed going forward. Anyone that thinks this start up thing is easy (particularly in local search), feel free to contact Jeremy or I ....we'll both tell you otherwise!

Comments

[Kevin L.]

Wow, I am constantly amazed at your candor. If only President Bush could look back at his 'mistakes' and go from there!

Here at MerchantCircle, we've watched the crowded directory space for awhile. I think you're making the right choice by going in a different direction. We've always looked at it strictly from the business owner side.

We wish you the best of luck in your new challenges ahead.

[bisi]

I've often believed that every business idea needs a

Business Model
Revenue Model
Marketing Model
Pricing Model

Some ideas are great but if they cannot be monetized they are not worth pursuing . Many people have created great products that they cant sell because while the products might be great they have no value to the prospective customer ..

I think that when one comes up with a business idea they should think about how they will market it first before they think about how much they will sell the product . If you cant figure out a great marketing model then abandon plan ..

[Jeff Smith]

Agreed, it's not easy or cheap to compete with the big boys. We have a module development list a mile long but feel that as we begin to pick away one at a time at our modules we will have a way more local-mindstate accurate directory/portal than anyone else. We have some pretty amazing things in store to make "customers feel loved", both users and local businesses.

I can't help but feel the fire under our collective ass to gain mindshare and marketshare asap, and hopefully we'll do just that. Right now however, we're about 15% of the way there... if that!

[Elspeth]

Being closer to soccer mom than younger set, I guess that's why I like JB and not Yelp. I signed up with them and haven't gone back. I think JB was the best of the bunch, and if you guys can't make it, I guess it's not a format that will work. Which is surprising since there were those newspaper articles about how review sites made business owners work harder, and my own experience of a local business owner essentially making my so-so review of her company into an ad of how "great" she was compared to the local competition.

It's too bad.

[jason]

Great acknowledge, it seems that ex-Paypal guys are on top in many categories: YouTube, Slide, Linkedin and now Yelp, great social network service Masters.

[Bob Dingwell]

Thiru,

Are you for real? Your comments are truly hillarious...

I especially like - "The model requires Telcos to sign-up merchants. We look to you to sell the concept to Qwest, Verizon, etc. There is nothing the Telcos need to do – technically. They simply need to sign up the merchants. "

Yep, nothing to do. Just sign up customer. yeah, and we will pay you for doing "nothing"...gee what a model. You should file a provisional patent!

--Bob

[Maggy]

Sorry, don't get this one. What are customers wanting to be doing - eating, drinking or writing reviews first? And is the discount enough to make them choose somewhere? And then they've got to do a review to pay for it! It also won't help venues at busy times. And won't these reviews be rushed - the antithesis of being thought through and most customers would feel embarrassed if they felt the place desered a poor review. So you end up with miles of hastily scribbled out tat. Also the merchants might find the 2-way payouts expensive. I envisage a lot of work chasing up merchant review payments for small outlets as these payments are not made in advance. Sorry I think the basic concept is good but the method is a problem.