As a big-time Yelper, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about a new feature making its way to Yelp’s mobile apps. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Soon, users will be able to capture short videos using the app for uploading to Yelp’s new “photos & videos” section.
The new feature will first rollout to Yelp’s “Elite” users — those who have proven themselves by submitting quality reviews and content over the years — but can be viewed by any of Yelp’s millions of members once uploaded. After the initial introduction phase, Yelp says they’ll open up the feature to everyone else. Before anyone gets any ideas of uploading anything in appropriate, Yelp says they’ll be filtering videos constantly to ensure nothing questionable turns up on the site.
Like Instagram, video clips can be up to 12 seconds in length, but it’s uncertain if Yelp will use a similar record/pause method to help capture multiple scenes (you can imagine how helpful it’d be to view dinning rooms, bathrooms, and/or multiple food dishes). At first, users will need to stick to using the app to record videos, but Yelp says they have plans to allow uploads from a device’s gallery down the line.
Capturing video is a great to show off the ambiance or noise level of a restaurant or business and only further catapults Yelp as the go-to service for reviews and restaurant discovery. The video update will arrive for both Android and iOS next month.
I actually like Yelp and apps alike. People who take the time to post to Yelp are usually trusthworthy enough to believe.
Was hoping Foursquare would grow into a worthy Yelp competitor, but I think they shot themselves in the foot by splitting up their app with Swarm.