Earlier this week, we explored "the Zagat of Restaurant Hygiene"; now, we have "the Rotten Tomatoes of restaurant reviews," ready to directly challenge the big boys on the block: Yelp.
Introducing Urbanspoon:
But [Urbanspoon is] approaching the market in a different way than Yelp and others. Instead of talking users into coming to their site and writing reviews, they’re taking a decentralized approach and aggregating available reviews from trusted sources around the web - local newspapers, citysearch, etc. The approach is very similar to what Rotten Tomatoes has done successfully with movies.Perhaps the biggest difference, as pointed out by an astute commenter, lies in the initial impact of a newly-launched city. From the get-go, Urbanspoon would roll out sites with full databases whereas new Yelp towns usually have drifting tumbleweed. Might we have a YelpGate in our future?
· Urbanspoon: Restaurant Reviews Coming To A City Near You [TechCrunch]
