Singapore, September 19, 2012 United States-based reviews and listing site, Yelp, has launched in Singapore. The site offers itself as a business listing for restaurants and services, and relies heavily on user-submitted reviews for content, beyond the basic listing information. True to its Silicon Valley roots, the firm does not plan to have a sales function or make money in Singapore just yet, till it has invested enough resources and time to establish its name here, according to Yelp's vice-president of new markets, Miriam Warren. Typically, foreign dotcoms tend to start out in new markets with sales, keeping the core functions back home. Google, for example, started here with a small temporary space in a hosted office, with a handful of staff helping it test the waters of search and online advertising. The search giant's office in Singapore now manages its sales operations across South-east Asia. Ms Warren said that even though Yelp has now expanded to 18 destinations globally - Singapore being the 18th - it only sells ads in the US, the United Kingdom and Canada. It makes most of its revenue via sponsored listings from merchants, and the rest from banner ads from larger advertisers. Singapore is Yelp's only Asian destination, and will remain so in the near term, she said. Besides local sites in North America and in large European nations, it has an Australian site. On the competition here, Ms Warren said many of the similar directory sites are focused on restaurants. Chief competition, HungryGoWhere, was recently acquired by SingTel for $12 million and will be subsumed into the parent's lifestyle portal, inSing.com. Another early competitor, buuuk.com, provided a food directory search with an augmented reality app, but the company's business model appears to have changed into offering app development services. Ms Warren pointed out that Yelp has rolled out many popular features across various sites online into its identity, such as behaving as a directory, as well as allowing check-ins and dialogue with other user functions that are typically found in social networking sites such as Facebook. The firm hopes that offering a platter of these services will have at least one stick with users. "Users are using it to chronicle their lives, and the community is central," Ms Warren said. Yelp has a community manager in each of its countries, whose job is to grow communities and talk to businesses, as well as create events for active Yelp users, she said. While it won't be opening an office in Singapore just yet, it is looking for a Singapore community manager. This person will work from home, she said. Yelp says it has 30 million reviews on its sites, and attracts 78 million monthly visitors. Shopping and restaurant-related submissions make up a fifth of these reviews each, with the rest going to services, health and travel. The site was founded in 2004 by two former PayPal employees, and it went public on the NYSE in March this year. According to LinkedIn, it has 800 employees. Yelp Singapore can be found at www.yelp.com.sg. Get The Business Times for more stories.
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