Yelp: How to build an online community

Did you know, I'm addicted to Yelp? Yelp is an online social networking and review site. In 2007, it completely replaced Citysearch (shitty-search) as the way to find good restaurants in Boston, New York, Houston, wherever (in the US)! Here's why:

Reputation This is key. I don't need to know your real identity. I do need to know your pseudonym can be trusted. The number of reviews a user produces, as well as the number of friends they have, compliments they have received and review votes all play in to answering the question "Can you trust what this person is saying?". So, after a while of using the site, and by looking at the users profile, you can get a sense of a users reputation.

Users have a way to evaluate the trustworthiness of other users. Now we can go on to bigger, better and more fun things!

Yelp succeeds in attracting foodies; people obsessed with restaurants, eating out and socializing. For the most valuable yelpers in the community, they award an "elite badge". This serves as a reward system - like with airline miles. The elite badge gives a user additional credibility - with the community at large and especially other yelp elite members. elite reviews seem to appear higher in the list of reviews on a business. Becoming elite on yelp also provides admission to special "elite" events. Off-line rewards for online behaviors are highly motivating.

Yelp and it's community provide a great feedback loop to each user. It's easy and fun to give others feedback. With every compliment a user receives, every friend request, every "useful, funny or cool" that gets checked on a review, with every private message received, users are encouraged to contribute more to the community. Get the wheels spinning enough and you're elite. Then you're addicted!

Even if users get bored of reading reviews, the message boards are a place to chat with other yelpers. Questions range from "What's your favorite book" to more personal questions like "Where to get a colonic in boston?". These usually trigger long funny discussions from other yelpers.

User reputation / status, the community feedback loop, and offline rewards all help to align an individual's selfish goals of entertainment, social status and being liked and respected with yelps goals of having great business reviews. Yelp is a great model to learn some lessons when building an online community. Do you yelp?