In a move which does not really surprise me, the folks at Elevation Partner’s have just increased their stake in the local search / user review engine Yelp from 25 to 100 million USD.
CNet reports the following:
Elevation Partners, the Silicon Valley private equity firm that counts U2′s Bono among its investors, announced Wednesday that it has committed up to $100 million in funding for reviews site Yelp.
It’s initially investing $25 million in the Series E round, and plans to increase the investment to up to $100 million through the purchase of stock from employees whose stock has vested, as well as other eligible shareholders.
…
If we look at Elevation’s past investments and the way they have moved the webOS, a clear trend emerges: the folks at ELP want to become a major player in “user data processing” for individuals.
The real strength of the Pre is not so much its powerful applications, but rather its “communicativeness” – the webOS is truly a “web OS” in that it makes getting the most out of your data its prime task.
In the future, there is little reason why the data created by Yelp users should not be integrated into the Pre. Think that you are standing next to a restaurant, and wonder whether its any good – maybe there’s some Yelp data to help you decide?
Things could become interesting soon…
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Tam, I’m not sure what you mean when you say that integration between WebOS and Yelp will happen ‘in the future’.
There has been a really good Yelp app for WebOS for several months now. I used it a lot when visiting New York for the first time in October last year. It’s awesome. You fire up the app, it quickly recognises where you are, then gives you a list of restaurants within a couple of minutes’ walk with reviews. You can then filter the results by price.
I found loads of great places I’d never have found otherwise, and I never had a meal that was less than great the whole time I used the app.
You should try it!