The rapid growth of me-too daily deal services was bound to see a turn at some point, and it looks like that moment has come. Today, it emerged that local reviews network Yelp is preparing to cut staff and “scale back” its one-year-old Yelp Deals service. The news comes days…

How many Keratin wraps, photography workshops and Hookah tokes does one person really need? After Groupon and LivingSocial, there are another 400 to 500 daily deal sites in the U.S., plus 200 more internationally—and very few people think the world needs that many. Expect plenty of consolidation in the next…

“Showing your phone to redeem a deal sucks,” said Tristan Walker, Foursquare’s director of business development, today at BIA/Kelsey’s Deals 3D conference. “We wanted to completely fix it and make it completely seamless, frictionless and magical.” Foursquare, Yelp and Shopkick are rolling out new mobile tools and launching new partnerships…

Online review sites are becoming an increasingly important catalyst to digital commerce—when it comes to shopping at local businesses, review sites like Yelp are many consumers’ first stop. Plenty of businesses don’t like the negative reviews they get, but a few thousand doctors have gone the extra mile to try…

Allegations that Yelp disfavors businesses who don’t advertise with it have been dogging the company for years. Two years ago, the S.F.-bay area alt-weekly East Bay Express ran a cover story called “Yelp And The Business Of Extortion 2.0,” featuring businesses that claimed they were told to pay advertising bucks…

Yelp and Twitter both get thousands of complaints a month, often asking for material to be taken down that is allegedly defamatory or otherwise illegal. They almost never comply. Speaking today at an event in Silicon Valley, the general counsels of both companies gave insight into how they deal with…

Here’s a sign of how the market for companies seeking funding has loosened up over the last year. When Twitter last raised a round of venture funding in September 2009, it was only the second U.S.-based digital media company to raise $100 million-plus in a year and a half; one…

While online directory Yelp has gotten more popular, it’s also been finding the levels of dissatisfaction from small business owners and commenters has been been rising at the same time. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s co-founder and CEO, tells the NYT’s Bits blog that the changes will involve more transparency, which is…

Apparently unable to nail down a deal to sell itself to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) for upwards of $500 million, Yelp is taking more venture capital cash instead. The local reviews site has raised $25 million in a fifth round of funding from Elevation Partners; Elevation has also agreed to invest…

Type the name of a local restaurant into the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search box, and one of three options are most likely to show up above the fold: A link to the restaurant’s homepage, a Google Maps module showing the restaurant’s location, or a Yelp review page. Often, the SEO-friendly…

Citysearch’s November relaunch came with everything from Facebook Connect compatibility to a new Smartphone-friendly mobile site. But users aren’t exactly gobbling them up. In just a year, local review site Yelp has grown to attract nearly the same size audience as its larger, better-funded rival—and the latest stats from Compete…

User-generated ratings site Yelp has been on a tear of late. But while users have embraced the site, small businesses, who are the target of sometimes-scathing reviews, have grumbled about not being able to counter critiques they feel are inaccurate or even intentionally negative. Now, the company is giving businesses…

SF-based Yelp, the much-hyped and big user-gen CitySearch competitor, has raised a $15 million round fourth from DAG, according to TechCrunch. Total funding for the company now comes to $31 million, having last raised $10 million in 2006. The latest raise puts the company at a $200 million valuation. In…