Fun with Yelp

I chose to play around with the Yelp website. What is Yelp, you ask? It's a site that allows people to review various businesses in a given area. I can take a look at what people think of certain restaurants, barber shops, animal shelters, and computer repair stores in Boca Raton! I can write my own review if I actually wanted to register on the site (I don't).

Since I spend a lot of time in Gainesville, I decided to take a look at one of my fiancee's favorite locales called Maude's. Reviews appear to be mixed. I also looked up an apparently renowned pizza place called Satchel's Pizza. Having never been there, I'm a bit inclined to check it out next time I'm up there!

Anyway, it seems like a cool site. The problem is that you really need a critical mass of users in order for this sort of thing to work. I've come across other sites like this before, and often times they're just ghost towns with lots of locations and no reviews. This one seems a bit better than those, so perhaps I'll keep it in mind next time I want to read more about a location somewhere.

As far as library usefulness, I suppose it could be a quick and dirty way of letting a patron know what other people think about a local restaurant or park.