Yelp is releasing new features as part of its winter release, which includes a more visual feed, AI-powered summaries of businesses, and number masking while contacting businesses for better privacy. Feed and discovery updates The business discovery platform is updating its feed on iOS — with an Android rollout planned in the next few months […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Yelp announced today that it’s introducing a series of new updates, including an enhanced AI-powered search experience and the ability to add videos to reviews. Yelp says it can now better understand a user’s search intent and highlight relevant information from reviews in new snippets that appear under each business listing in search results. For example, when you search for “tennis courts” on Yelp, you will now see review highlights about tennis courts under each park or facility listed, such as “there are tennis courts that you need to book in advance.” The company says it’s also using AI t ..read more

Amid signs of life in the NFT market, an NFT-focused startup, Thred, launched today to help users discover new collections, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. “We think of it like a Yelp, Tripadvisor or Zillow of the space,” Ben Straley, founder and CEO of Thred, said to TechCrunch. Straley has over 25 years of experience in digital product and customer experience leadership and was the prior head of global outbound marketing and deals at Amazon and the VP of global digital products at Starbucks, among other roles. “Between these two roles, I learned a ton about how to use data and machi ..read more

Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, companies have been bolstering efforts and navigating the legal landscape to provide care to birthing people. Yelp is now following suit.  The company announced, in an exclusive first shared with Axios, that it will add a consumer notice to crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) to differentiate them from abortion clinics. The notice will notify users and read that these centers “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.” According to Planned Parenthood, these centers do not provide abortion services a ..read more

Zoom has in many ways “won” the mindshare game when it comes to video conferencing: Whether you’re actually using Zoom or another service that’s wrapped into another platform like Google or Microsoft, and whether it’s for work or fun, the standalone Zoom app is the one that people reference, the one that has claimed anthimeric status. But for those who use Zoom, Google’s Meet, Microsoft’s Teams or something else, you’ll know that they still lack in certain scenarios. Today a startup called Venue, built to plug one of those gaps — larger team meetings — is setting out its stall to compete, with ..read more

A new app for iPhone users can help you browse the web without being constantly bothered by pop-up panels that beg you to use the company’s app instead. The app, called Banish, is a Safari extension that helps remove the “open in app” banners from various websites and other popups that block content across a number of sites, like Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Medium, Yelp and some Google sites, to name a few. While there are a number of similar Safari extensions for blocking cookie banners and ads, the scourge of the “Open in App” banners is often not addressed by existing solution ..read more

Yelp updating its Android app to introduce a new vertical Home Feed and search results with maps for better restaurant discovery, following last year’s release of a similar update for Yelp’s iOS users. The company said the new vertical feed features highlights from local businesses and popular dishes from the restaurants around you. Yelp also plans to soon feature user-generated content, like reviews, on the app’s home screen. The Android redesign also brings an updated map to explore functionality to bring a visual element to search. This comes after Instagram rolled out a searchable map expe ..read more

Yelp is broadening its partnership with Seattle-based food tech startup Hazel Analytics to expand health ratings on its platform, the company announced on Thursday. The two companies are working together to further expand Yelp’s health grades information on restaurant listings. Yelp first partnered with Hazel Analytics last year to display inspection details for restaurants on its platform. Hazel Analytics now provides the hygiene data on nearly 700,000 Yelp pages, and lists information about health inspection jurisdictions representing nearly 70% of the U.S. population. This feature incorpora ..read more

A major Senate bill that would prevent tech companies from giving preference to their own products and services just passed a significant hurdle in Congress, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted today on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, moving the prominent antitrust bill toward a vote before the full Senate. The bill passed its committee vote 16-6 Thursday, with five Republicans joining Senate Democrats to press forward with the legislation. The bill would prohibit tech platforms from “favoring their own products or services, disadvan ..read more

The trade group representing Silicon Valley’s biggest companies will disband, even as tech enters a new era of intense regulatory scrutiny in the nation’s capital. The Internet Association has fought for tech’s interests in Washington for the last nine years, lobbying lawmakers to advance the combined interests of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, eBay, Spotify, Zillow and many more of the most recognizable names in tech, from the largest companies on down. Politico first reported that the group would close up shop. “Our industry has undergone tremendous growth and change since ..read more