If you’re flustered and flummoxed as to where to find Mediterranean cuisine or if you desperately need to find a plumber or, for the matter, any other kind of service or store in your immediate vicinityon short notice but have absolutely no idea short of Googling it, you’re in luck as you’re able to Yelp it now from your phone.
Yelp, the San Francisco based crowd sourced review app has made its presence known in Malaysia with the app available for download as of now. Founded in 2004, the company’s name has a rather unique origin, a portmanteau of Yellow Pages and help as well as the sound a dog would make if their tail were to get stepped on underfoot.
To date, Yelp has has over 77 million reviews on all manner of establishments around the world. The app allows users to search for an array of businesses ranging from food all the way to dentists and even mechanics. Users are also able to submit reviews and post them on the site. Other users are able to peruse the app to get a picture of the quality or lack thereof of an establishment. To ensure quality control, an algorithm vets reviews to ascertain the quality and value of the review and flagging dodgy ones.
In the Yelp app, users are able to get exact directions to a venue, get check-in offers for businesses and also search for them based on a number of different criteria. The app also has a unique monocle function that acts as an augmented reality app that turns on the camera and GPS and gives you information and ratings on local businesses around you. As part of localisation efforts for Malaysia, Yelp has added two new food categories dear to our hearts – Nasi Lemak and Mamak as well as being localised in Bahasa Malaysia though English is also available, depending on your phone language settings.
On the other side of the fence, business owners in Yelp Malaysia can logon to biz.yelp.my to add basic business information, photos and other customer info as well as respond to reviews written about their business. The app is free for download for iOS, Android, Microsoft Mobile and Blackberry OS.
