Project 0 Obersevation of Things Again

This project 0 similar to my others ones is a combination of a software obsession and analyzing how software constructs as the user. This time around I’m looking at Yelp. Before meeting my girlfriend I had never even used the Yelp app but now to help us decide where we’re going to eat I use it pretty frequently because she can’t help me decide what we’re going to eat for her life so I use it. It’s been a go-to for seeing restaurants nearby and the quality and pricing of these places with the occasional review. The thing I noticed recently about it though was that a early after I had just downloaded it, it asked me if I wanted to connect to Facebook and I never really knew why. I thought it was just a way to easily give yourself an identity on the app by giving your picture when you leave a review. I just learned recently that it also, without a setting being turned on, puts up responses that some of your facebook friends posted onto a feed of yours. I feel like this is Yelp’s way of influencing the user more on the so-called “good” restaurants because their friends gave it a good review. What if I didn’t care where my friends ate or what they thought of it. Facebook and Yelp just kind of give me this random information about some place that friends ate regardless of if they can even be applicable to me. In the screenshot one of the girls that updated this “status” of sorts is living in New York and I feel like I can’t do anything with this information. Yelp is trying to have this Facebook-like appeal to it where there is a feed where friends share and you can like or dislike a restaurant accordingly. Its almost as if Yelp is trying to fit into this “template” for a successful app by copying that of facebook with the implication of a feed.

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