London Archive

Reviews site Yelp has announced the launch of a local site for UK residents today. The company notes that over 100,000 visitors from the UK visit Yelp monthly. It will be interesting to see what type of community builds around the UK Yelp and see how it compares to the USA or Canadian versions. I am an infrequent Yelp’er — I write a bunch of reviews but I wouldn’t consider myself part of the Yelp community.

Jemima Kiss of the Guardian has a good review of the Yelp UK launch. The comments on her post suggest that Yelp might have some work to do to win over the UK reviews audience. With Google aggregating reviews, there comes a point where a person can stay in their community and still be seen across the Web. 

Other local UK reviews site we have reviewed include WeLoveLocal and TrustedReviews.

The Guardian in the UK is out with their top picks for 2009. Actually they state, "here are our 100 revised best sites to see you through the next couple of years". So I assume that means we have to put up with some of these services for more than the next 12 months? (lol?) So let’s check out their list – click to view the full list.

• Blogging – they like WordPress and Bloglines
• Browsers – they like EVERY browser except IE
• Cartoons – Dilbert is one of their picks
• Create/Collaborate – Zoho and Remember the Milk are two of their selections
• Games – they go with a variety of blogs from the UK – thought this was about web apps?
• Geek Squad – nice to see NY-based Joel on Software get a nod even though he’s a blogger
• Public Services – good roundup – sites I haven’t heard of but will try to review on CN
• Location – dopplr gets a nod – does anyone besides Scoble use this anymore?
• Mapping – there’s a noise pollution map listed – pretty interesting – I can only imagine what my area would get for a score!
• Money sites – all UK based which makes sense – Zopa gets the nod in the social lending space
• Music – last and blip .fm listed but no Pandora
• News – well lookie there, Digg on top – how’d we see that coming? Techmeme listed along with Slashdot
• Offbeat – the lolcats won’t die in the next couple of years apparently – damn.
• Photography – flickr is the best apparently
• Physical from virtual – they love their UK-based Moo – I dislike the moo cards – especially now processing them on CloudContacts
• Social Networking – same ole same ole

They have even dedicated a special section to Twitter tools! It’s an interesting list worth checking out as there are a few new sites on the list.

We’ve written about London-based Skimbit several times and CEO Alicia Navarro provided her reasons why the UK is a great place to build a startup.

Today the Skimbit team is announcing the launch of Skimlinks. The easiest way to describe Skimlinks is that they provide a way to instantly turn all of your product links into affiliate links with no changes to individual content. You add one line of Javascript to your template and then, where Skimlinks has a relationship, the links automatically become affiliate links.

Revenue is split between you and Skimlinks. Skimlinks doesn’t share what percentage they take of each sale. What I like about Skimlinks is that once you add the Javascript code to your site, all of your old pages of content will also work with the Skimlinks program.

Skimlinks works with merchants including AmazonUK, Ticketmaster, Boots, eBay, BT and play.com. It looks like the list is mostly UK-based companies. Depending on what percentage Skimlinks takes, it may make sense to use Skimlinks in addition to affiliate programs you are already running.

Here’s a video overview of how the Skimlinks system works and you can checkout another viewpoint on the launch from Jemima Kiss.

We’ve written several times about social networks for moms including NY-based CafeMom. Today I came across a social network for dads called Odadeo which launched this past Father’s Day. I basically had no father but could see where a site like Odadeo could be very beneficial for not just new dads but also dads dealing with their children at all stages of life.

The site starts out with a question, "How am I going to be a better dad?" What a great question to ask — it could actually work across a variety of other categories as well. Basically dads create pledges for their families and then other dads provide tips on how to accomplish the pledges. Pledges can be tracked with charts and graphs so that dads can monitor their progress. There are ties into a SMS function along with Twitter integration.

I could see odadeo growing into a strong resource for dads. They could easily add more content and more how-to content. Perhaps a partnership with a site like 5min on how-to videos. Would also like to see a local resource locator – so dads know where to go for help locally.

Dads can also create pages for their kids — similar to the other kid sites we’ve reviewed in the past. Odadeo moved into public beta last week — the team is based in Cardiff and Birmingham in the UK. Somehow I am guessing dads are hesitant to ask for help – similar to asking for driving directions. I guess to some extent, odadeo is like the social GPS for parenting.

TrustedPlaces is a UK-based startup that launched two years ago in the hopes of providing a home for independent reviews of businesses. The reviews cover bars, restaurants, food, nightlife and cafes. They have just launched a Christmas section (should be the holiday section!).

TrustedPlaces is similar to Yelp here in the U.S. and another UK site we have reviewed, welovelocal. The company has raised $1 million in 2007. Last year TrustedPlaces introduced "learning" where you can find other good locations based on your profile from other TrustedPlaces members.

The site gets a bit odd if you navigate through the footer to other countries. Selecting the U.S., you are presented with a list of 20,000 locations but no navigation and no categorization. Instead the list is presented in alphabetical order. Clicking a navigation item takes you back to the UK site. Why not spend a few hours and create a proper US (and other countries) site?

TrustedPlaces offers login access through FacebookConnect and OpenID. Lastly, TrustedPlaces offers a very interactive widget for their members. You can create lists and widgetize them for your blog or social network profile.

Online financial services site Wesabe has announced a new partnership today which will bring Wesabe’s financial tools to the UK. The tools are live on the Daily Telegraph’s website, telegraph.co.uk. Wesabe already claims to support members in 30 countries. From what I can recall, this is the first international deal for any of the new crop of U.S. based online financial services providers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Telegraph self-reported 22.9 million unique visitors in September 2008. It will be interesting to see how UK residents take to the idea of sharing their bank information/passwords with an external source and one that is based outside the UK. Wesabe allows their customers to upload files as well which does not require bank passwords to be shared. Most of the other new online banking services do not support this option and require bank passwords to be shared.

In any event this looks like a huge win for Wesabe as it should provide good visibility for their service in another large country outside the U.S.

comScore has released new research today about UK Internet users and their browsing habits. Specifically, comScore reports that 41% of UK Internet users visited a blog in August of 2008. Blogger.com was the most popular blog platform followed by WordPress, Six Apart, Hubpages and Xanga.

The five most popular visited blogs were: Engadget, UnRealityTV, Gizmodo, Kotaku and Metafilter.

Here’s a chart of what types of blogs "heavy" Internet users in the U.K. visited in August. Humor was the most popular followed by Web hosting and Food. I guess that’s all you really need in life… some jokes, a good Web host and some food.