Cool Tools: Yelp
by elizabethtomyn
Today I’m blogging about a mobile app I use that I discovered in the past year: Yelp. On the web, Yelp is a site for discovering and reviewing businesses. While there are dozens of categories to choose from, the most popular by far is the food industry with several different categories devoted to specific types of restaurants. Yelp users review these businesses, which include shopping locations, hotels and travel, and even health and medical services, to name a few. They also use the site to find a business in their area and discover both basics—like the address, services, prices, and hours of operation—as well as specific recommendations (or warnings) from those who have gone before. Searching is primarily what I use Yelp for, except I use the mobile app.
The mobile app takes things to a different level. You can use it while you’re out to search for the businesses closest to your current location. Most of the time when I use the Yelp mobile app it is to search for restaurants or coffee and tea shops. One thing I love about Yelp in general is that they focus mostly on local businesses. There are some chain restaurants that get reviewed on Yelp, which can sometimes be helpful, but not many. I love food, tea, and the many unique places that serve them. I think it is important to support local businesses. And I also just enjoy discovering new places. Yelp is an awesome tool for this!
One of my favorite details about the Yelp mobile app, however, has to be the augmented reality feature called the monocle. I actually was not using the Yelp mobile app at the time I discovered this and decided to download the app after seeing it. A friend and I were looking for a place to eat lunch, and when she went to search Yelp on her phone she accidentally discovered this hidden tool. What I saw through the monocle was a view of the street in front of me, and the names and average reviews of restaurants hovering above their locations. All we had to do was spin in a circle to see what restaurants were close by. I love this feature and use it a lot, although sometimes it’s just for fun. I do also use the general search features of the app, and used it while I was out of town this weekend to discover a new restaurant. I’ve linked to that restaurant’s Yelp page so you can see a specific example of how it works—and also because I highly recommend this restaurant!
Yelp has its pros and cons, of course. There are often mixed reviews on locations and the app can sometimes be hard to navigate. But it helps me to discover new things and make informed decisions about them. That is why I use Yelp.
A Journey through Social Media 
Nice blog post!
Thank you!
I have always heard of yelp, but I’ve never taken the time to download and use it. After reading your post, though, I think I may change that. The monocle tool sounds awesome and really fun to use! Great post!
The monocle tool is really fun, and makes it easier to find where the places actually are! Sometimes, especially if I’m in an unfamiliar place, I don’t know road names and things in the surrounding area so the visual really helps. Thanks for reading!
So I have heard of Yelp, but didn’t know what it really was until now. Great blog post! I use the app ‘Around me’ especially for finding restaurants in new locations. Do you think it is better. Yelp sounds like it has a leg up on Around me because it brings the reviews all together. I also love how it sounds like it really helps the user find the brick and mortar location. Thanks for posting!
I haven’t used Around Me before, so I can’t compare it to Yelp. I have found the map feature is sometimes hard to navigate in other apps like this I’ve used, though, which is one of the reasons I switched to Yelp. It’s not flawless, but it has been pretty good to me so far and has several options for finding the location. Thanks for reading!