In the 2001 film “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” title character Jay asked Ben Affleck’s character, Holden McNeil, “What the (expletive) is the Internet?” McNeil answered appropriately given the reasonable infancy of the Web at the time, “The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another.” That was before Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) allowed users around the world to come together to bitch about local businesses.
Yelp’s growth
Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) has grown and grown over the years and now has around 2,000 employees and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million monthly users. Today, the company announced that in addition to users being able to write reviews of local businesses as well as reading others, the company will roll-out the option for users to include videos in their reviews beginning this summer.
Provided you are an “Elite” user that is. Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP)’s mobile product manager recently gave Business Insider the exclusive of the apps announcement and a sneak peak of the video upload interface of which BI posted screenshots of yesterday.
Why video?
Madhu Prabaker also told BI that the introduction of video will allow reviewers to detail the atmosphere of businesses in a way that photos alone cannot.
“It will be a reward for businesses that go to great lengths to achieve a certain ambiance, whether by having a certain lighting or the music at just the right level,” Prabaker says.
The ability to upload videos will become available in June for Elite users before it is rolled out to all reviewers over the summer. Users of any level will be allowed to view the videos that will range between three and twelve seconds in length. Presently, users upload 70% of photos to the website via a mobile device and that accounts for 23,000 new photos per day.
Soon people around the world will be able to slag off businesses with a new tool, I can’t wait.
