yelp

Yelp, the giant local-reviews network, filed today to raise as much as $100 million in an initial offering--one that, should it come off as planned, would allow the startup to boast it was right to spurn would-be suitors Google and Yahoo.

Yelp didn't disclose a target share price or a potential market cap valuation, which is par for the course in initial IPO filings. Fortune's Dan Primack notes that Yelp is reportedly seeking a valuation in the $1 billion to $2 billion range.

The IPO filing is a big, but long-expected move for Yelp, which was founded … Read more

Yelp, the user-generated reviews site, has chosen Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead an initial public offering that could value the company at about $2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The startup hasn't been shy about its desire to tap into the equity markets, and Groupon's IPO last week has likely made Yelp executives more confident that they can have a successful offering. Others in the wings include Zynga, Angie's List and, the potential biggie of them all, Facebook.

The Journal says Yelp plans to file its IPO plans in the next few weeks with … Read more

You're launching a daily deal site with a (slightly) new twist. You're sure it's the next big thing. Yet there are so many sites out there--384, according to Yipit, a firm that tries to makes sense of all these deals for consumers--and the press is already writing the people-are-sick-of-daily-deal-sites stories.

So what do you do to get attention? You launch the same week that the granddaddy of daily deal sites, 3-year-old Groupon, is going public.

The CEO and founder of DailyDeals.com, Steve Schaffer, says the timing for today's launch wasn't planned to be near … Read more

A judge dismissed the class action lawsuit against social reviews site Yelp, putting an end to a case filed against it by a group of unhappy business owners.

That suit, which was filed last February, claimed that Yelp was running an "extortion scheme" by asking businesses to pay the company in exchange for the removal of negative reviews, claims denied by Yelp.

"While we were confident that Yelp would ultimately prevail because we knew the allegations were false, it is helpful to have the matter resolved early so we can put these allegations behind us," Yelp … Read more

Augmented reality in smartphones is just getting started.

If you have a smartphone or Nintendo 3DS, you've probably played with some form of augmented reality, which superimposes graphics, words and other useful information over real-life images.

Yelp, for instance, offers its Monocle feature, allowing you to see local listings superimposed over the image captured by the phone's camera. It uses the compass and gyroscope to locate the specific listings, which move in and out of view depending on where you hold the device. The augmented browser Layar came to prominence by accomplishing the same feat on Android smartphones. … Read more

Testing GPS devices can be a grind--a dull, boring grind. So when a device comes along promising to revolutionize portable navigation devices, I tend to perk up and take notice. The TomTom Go Live 1535M is one of those attention-getters.

When this portable navigation device (PND) was announced a few weeks ago, I was intrigued by its integration of travel apps that enable the user to tap into Yelp, Trip Advisor, Expedia, and Google Local Search services for up-to-date point-of-interest data and reviews via the same Live data service that beams in its HD Traffic data. I was even more … Read more

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Wednesday, September 21.

• In his testimony, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt referred to Microsoft's mistakes (without actually naming the tech firm directly). Meanwhile, Google competitors such as Yelp tell senators during an antitrust subcommittee hearing that the company "rigs" search results. CBS news reports: "The early fireworks appeared when Sen. Michael S. Lee (R-Utah) produced data showing that Google's owned and operated properties often were among the top links." Google says trust us. More … Read more

Moments after Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told senators "we get it" in regard to regulatory scrutiny, the search giant's rivals refuted the point.

"Google doesn't get it," said Thomas O. Barnett, a lawyer for Expedia, which fought Google's acquisition of flight data provider ITA Software. "Google won't even admit reality."

Barnett said the company is expanding its market power, growing in mobile phones and mobile search, in particular. And it's using that power to direct users to its services, rather than penalizing rivals who are direct competitors.

Some … Read more

The shine appears to be fading on the daily-deals marketing model.

On the heels of Facebook's announcement last week that it would abandon its Facebook Deals, which offered discounted coupons for local businesses, Yelp announced today it is trimming the number of employees working on its Deals product. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's chief executive officer and co-founder, wrote in a blog post that while daily deals have been a hit for certain types of businesses, the model is struggling to deal with issues raised by both consumers and participating businesses: