Just as an aside, Yelp is not the only food community that I participate in online, and by participate, I include reading, responding, and lurking. I find trusted sources in many different places, from comments on recipes on FoodTV.com and Recipes.com, feedback from people on Twitter, videos on YouTube and RealMeals.tv, and recipe links from different users on delicious. For me, a trusted source is someone who, time and again, provides me with reliable information that, on some level, I can corroborate through experience. A trusted source isn’t a name, or a “real name” versus a pseudonym, it’s a source of consistent and real information.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an Elite member on Yelp, and that comes from being involved in the community. Members are offered Elite status because of the quality of their reviews, efforts to rate other reviews, and compliments offered to other people on their reviews. It’s my duty as a Yelp Elite to help people understand and encourage people to participate in the community, and it’s something I do because I like the community.

I feel the need to clarify my comment about Yelp, especially since I wrote it entirely too fast… I was running late for my evening engagement. Note to self: you can always append a post later, never write in such a hurry for anything so important!

I am disappointed that a panel on “social media” — a very broad term encompassing a wide range of outlets online — didn’t really know what Yelp was. While I’m one of the biggest proponents of users finding sites with communities that work for them, instead of just jumping on any social networking wagon that comes along, the panel was very blog-as-social-media biased; it almost felt like the food blog community was touted by some to be *the* way to get advice, information, and reviews. I totally recognize the power of strong community, and the strength and beauty that was represented in the food blog panel yesterday was, indeed, mighty, there are other food outlets on the web — RealMeals.tv, Yelp, comments on recipes on FoodTV.com, Recipes.com, just to name a few — and I was hoping that more of those outlets would be actually represented in the session.

On Yelp, it sounds like that is your community and that is great. But to develop a sense of security and trust in a community, you need to put time into it and distinguish who is a trusted source and who isn’t. Glad you’ve found your trusted source site (for restaurant info, I am a Nymag.com devote — but I am from the New York area, so that’s best tapped into my community).

I’m sorry none of us had that much to say about Yelp. For me personally, it’s just not something I’ve ever had time to investigate.