Yelp has been “me too” for almost everything that becomes hot and to be honest its been pretty pathetic. I must say though that adding daily deals for their clients is right in line with their business model and makes sense for them to get into it. They have the eyeballs already, why not generate some serious revenue from them.

Well, with the credibility record Yelp has created it’s going to be tough[er] to win me over from Groupon. I guess most Yelp users will either not know or not care.

Groupon is great for service oriented business, but not retail ones. The margins are awful with retail. I hope Yelp fixes this.

Yelp is an excellent social utility, there is another utility called Dlinked which is coming soon. You can register to get notified when it comes live http://tiny.cc/1y8lq

Because the world needs another deal site…

So tired of these startups morphing into each other, if only there was one huge company that could just give us everything we want…

I don’t think Yelp stands much of a chance against Google, personally.

Considering Yelp’s place in the ecosystem (the place people go to find out how users rate a place), it would make sense for them to aggregate deals. It would increase their utility to consumers looking at various businesses and making a choice where to go.

Groupon gouges these small local companies by taking 50% of the revenue from the already crazy discounted price. They will have a “Walmart effect” on these small vendors.

I’m hoping companies like Living social (takes 30%) and others drive Groupon’s commissions down to say 10%.

Yelp should into the business and drive Groupon out. Groupon == GougeON.

I think Yelp already has enough to deal with considering Google is taking over their whole business model with better monetization options. Yelp is going to spread itself so thin that they won’t be able to compete on anything. Hopefully Yelp looks at what they are best at and sticks to that such as something more in the local lead generation space instead of trying to go with mass consumerism and something that takes a good bit of money to get enough subscribers for.

What’s funny is that old school print companies have more deals than all of these guys – redplum.com probably has more zip code based deals than all of them combined (even if it is a hard to use interface) — the Yelps and Foursquares of the world should just make a deal with those guys to source all of their deals and show them off better (doubtful they even know what they have, yet).

I think that a business model more similar to restaurant.com makes sense for yelp.

Offering standing discounts for first time visitors would work great. Also, making exclusive discounts for elite members would fit perfectly into the yelp ecosystem.

The weekly deals might generate some revenue too… but people already check yelp when they want to eat somewhere. Why not let them buy discounted gift certificates at the same time?

Yelp has already added restaurant.com integration.

seems that anything that’s labeled a “craze” is bound to fail sometime soon.

It’s about time. Might be too late.

Seems like a no brainer for Yelp to incorporate into their platform since fits right into what they are already doing and good at. Everyone else seems to be copying Groupon, why not them?

From a user perspective, get’s to a pain unless there’s on online spot for all the deals. Ah, an idea…CouponCluster.com. Sorry, gotta go…rats! taken already.

it’s called Google

Exactly. And the real question is, how many salon, restaurant deals can groupon’s usership sustain. I think groupon has done a tremendous job — the founders are all rich now — but their model is easy to copy and is a couple year fad at best. All VCs and others chasing now are doomed. But since when have VCs not chased and, well, their model — as covered on TC and elsewhere — is doomed as well.

maybe it’s time to start spamming another blog? What do you think?

Why shouldn’t Yelp sale the deals if they can?
At the end of day compilation is good for any business. Merchants and consumer both now have new choice.

However, selection of right deal is very confusing with new players. But I keep a watch on Urbanspoils (http://www.urbanspoils.com) where I can see all the deal in comparable layout. So I can choose the best.

Ooo UrbanSpoils is a new one for me & i love the clean layout -Thanks

I love these sites – if Yelp joins in, it just means that we have more options. :)

Going to be interesting to see what happens with all these startups in this market.

Looks like http://dailydeal.com is launching as well. Thats a pretty darn good domain name, surprised the bigger boys haven’t picked it up by now.

Amazing domain name but 1,400 users wont get them very far -

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/dailydeal.com+groupon.com/

The barrier to entry isnt buying a domain, or having a site or having a cool strategy….the only barrier on the Web is getting traffic and traction.

The space is too saturated. All us smaller players will still sustain our own audience/niche, however. I can see a ton of acquisitions + quitters soon.

These sites are seriously popping up everywhere. I just noticed a new one starting up here in Fort Lauderdale

http://www.engagefortlauderdale.com

For businesses who need customers or traffic, Groupon is a great opportunity.

However, for many businesses, a couple of important disadvantages exist to using Groupon or other deal or group buying sites.

First, businesses are only able to get their deals on Groupon once in a blue moon, given competition to get on Groupon and given Groupon’s interest in diversity. However, many retailers and their customers, would like deals to repeat more frequently.

Second, given how Groupon monetizes, Groupon has an incentive to sell as many deals as possible. However, the business may be interested in a ceiling. Sales via Groupon are likely lower margin then a businesses average. As such, if a deal sells like crazy, it may be bittersweet for the business: lower margin orders will cannibalize average margin orders for some time. Hopefully, the business can make it up via up/cross selling and repeat business down the line.

Given these issues, many retailers would be better served to launch their own “one deal at a time” store, via a platform like http://www.dealo.com or by building their own custom solution.

Along with addressing the two issues above, they’ll be able to get all of the value out of the ODAT model, creating scarcity and social proof (proven factors that motivate shoppers), instead of sharing that value with Groupon. Also, they’ll be able to use their own design/branding/domain, in order to build their own brand and customer base, instead of building Groupons. If the business can get customers following their own deals on Facebook/Twitter/Email/RSS/SMS, instead of Groupons, they’ll be building their own value, instead of donating to Groupons by piggybacking.

lol they haven’t even launched yet and you’re comparing their stats to groupon haha.

Yelp is not a threat to Groupon. Facebook probably, but Yelp definitely not. In the AP’s article a few days ago they talked about merchants being overwhelmed with bookings generated by Groupon and the Yelp rating for that business went from 4 stars to 2.5 in one day. How’s Yelp going to help businesses handle that? If someone gets the deal from Yelp directly, the customer review rate is going to be a lot higher than it would if Groupon served it. They’re going to have to do a lot of educating to assist the business owner on how to provide the same level of customer service so their rating doesn’t go down the toilet. That extra educational time is going to add up to more money spent by Yelp and less profit margin compared to Groupon.