The latest from TechCrunch
- Qype, The Yelp Of Europe, Gets A Look From Google & Nokia
- Competition! Mad Lib your favourite site's sign up page for fame, shampoo and other prizes
| Qype, The Yelp Of Europe, Gets A Look From Google & Nokia | Top |
| Hamburg, Germany based Qype , a Yelp-like site that’s focused on European markets, has recently had long acquisition looks from both Google and Nokia, we’ve heard from multiple sources. A deal with Nokia in particular was looking extremely likely until recently. The site was first launched in 2005 and today attracts 9 million monthly worldwide visitors, according to Comscore, just a little less than Yelp’s 11 million. Both likely have far more actual visitors, but Comscore is good for comparision – in December, for example, Qype told us they had 17.7 million unique visitors. A year ago the company brought in a new CEO and have been expanding rapidly across Europe. Google supposedly took a look at the company and passed, opting instead to just import Qype’s content. Nokia made a run for the company after Google, with one source saying that a term sheet had been signed in the $50 million range. But another source says that a term sheet was never signed and the deal negotiations broke down over both price and other contract terms. Qype isn’t helping much with the story, sticking to their no comments. But founder Stephan Uhrenbacher did email to tell us that the site has 500,000 registered users who’ve left over 1 million reviews. They are available in seven languages and have sites in UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Brazil, Ireland. So for now at least Qype may remain independent. But like Yelp, which had its own acquisition drama late last year, Qype is in the local advertising sweet spot, where billions of advertising dollars (and euros) will be flowing over the next few years. Qype has raised around £8 million in venture capital. CrunchBase Information Qype Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Competition! Mad Lib your favourite site's sign up page for fame, shampoo and other prizes | Top |
| Yesterday, Luke Wroblewski – Chief design architect at Yahoo! – wrote a blog post singing the praises of audiosharing site Huffduffer. But it wasn’t Huffduffer’s service that got Luke W animated, so much as their sign-up page . While most sites use a standard form with text-boxes and radio buttons for new sign-ups, Huffduffer presents its questions as a ‘Mad Lib’ style statement… “I would like to use Huffduffer. I want my username to be _____________ and I want my password to be _____________. My email address is _________. By the way, my name is ______________ and my website is ___________.” …which is kinda neat. But Luke, being a ‘chief design architect’ (one of the world’s more tautological job titles), wanted to find out more. Specifically, he wanted to know if this style of form actually encourages more people to sign up than the usual Name: ___________ / Email address: __________ format. So he persuaded Ron Kurti at Vast.com to do some A/B testing and, whaddya know?, it turns out the conversational fill-in-the-blanks form increased conversion by 25-40%. Given those impressive numbers it’s a cast iron certainty that in the next few months dozens of sites, starting probably with Yahoo!, will consider upgrading their sign-up pages to this new, friendlier format. The trick, of course, will be to get the wording just right – to customize each sign-up page for the site’s particular audience. …which has given me an idea for a ‘fun’ weekend contest! Hurrah! Your challenge is this: suggest some Mad Lib-style wording for the sign up page of your favourite web 2.0 site. The funnier the better. Post your entry in the comments and his time next week I’ll pick the funniest (say) three and award some excellent prizes. Prizes that will include (but are not limited to): fame, recognition of your brilliance and whatever crap I can find in my hotel room – a signed copy of my eBay-auction-winning book , a TechCrunch tshirt and maybe one of those little bottles of shampoo you get. Here are some examples off the top of my head to inspire you. Yours should be better… Twitter: “I do everything Oprah tells me to do so I’d like to use Twitter for three days. I’d like my username to be __________ and my password to be ‘password123′, or the name of my dog which is ______________. Please autofollow me to Oprah, Ellen Degeneres and Taylor Swift.” Google: “My name is ___________ and I would like to sign up to use Gmail/Google Buzz. The name of the person I am secretly having an affair with is ___________ and my social security number is _______________. Please display this information on my public profile.” YouTube: “LOL!!!! My n@me is ____________ & I wanna join yutube becos this video sukkkssss!! I think _____________ is GAAY!!! LOLLZ” Livejournal: “My name is ______________ and joining Livejournal is my only hope of getting anyone to read my poetry. My birthstone is ____________ and my current mood is _____________ and lonely. No one understands me. I hate my life.” MySpace: “My name is ____________ and due to some kind of administrative error I would like to join MySpace.” Go, submit! | |
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