在Yelp成立10周年之际，我们在Eater的朋友们发表了一篇关于Yelp如何成为今天的推荐巨兽的悠久历史。所有这些都值得一读，但最棒的部分是我的博客，它描述了Yelp的第一次迭代如何帮助你找到最好的地方和服务：

Here's how Yelp! works. Go to the web site (it's in this week's links, but I'll just bet you can guess the URL without even looking) and sign up for the service. Tell it what you are looking for (a plumber), put the need in some context (for my broken Jacuzzi bathtub) and give it a location (Charleston, SC). Then Yelp! expects you to tell it the e-mail addresses of a couple people whom you would contact with the question yourself if this service didn't exist. That's all. Then Yelp! sends e-mails to the folks you have listed along with any other people in its database who are in the same geographical area and/or have expressed opini*** on similar queries. Part of what Yelp! does, too, is to ask these people if they can recommend yet another person who might better know the answer. Then Yelp! monitors and compiles the resp***es and makes some effort to get back to those who don't reply. Eventually, a list of resources is sent back to the original questioner along with information gleaned from other databases about how to reach these people and maybe even how to be a better-informed c***umer.

基本上你给三个朋友发邮件，他们给三个朋友发邮件，Yelp也给三个朋友发邮件，然后唠叨着让每个人都回复。Yelp是一个乐于助人的金字塔计划。幸运的是，这篇文章写了一年后，它进行了修改，允许人们在网站上分享评论。这就是Yelp今天的工作方式，而且。。。好多了。