Sarah Lacy, the BusinessWeek writer who caused a melee at South By last month, turns her attention from Facebook to Yelp for the moment.
Yelp’s real Web 2.0 bragging right is its business model. Unlike many companies in its peer group, Yelp provides a compelling advertising platform. People go there intending to make a transaction—say, find a Thai restaurant in New York or an accountant in San Francisco. And it’s always easier to sell ads to someone when you know what they want. Even on a search engine like Google, people are only looking to transact part of the time. Often, they go to get information. And on a social network such as Facebook, people aren’t looking to transact at all; they’re just there to connect with friends.
I like how Lacy breaks that down. Web-based business models are all clamoring for ad dollars, but how many of them have asked the hard questions of themselves? Like, “Will our users click banner ads?”
