Smiley faces, top hats and, yes, even that creepy, winking cat emoji are new ways to search through Yelp’s application for local business and restaurant recommendations.
Yelp was invented in 2004 to help people find local recommendations through email. Since then, Yelp has expanded to include social networking features, discounts and mobile applications, according to the company’s website.
Ashley Vonada, a UF theater freshman, said she thinks although the new application feature is a good idea, the emojis won’t be specific enough.
“If you use a smiley face, for example, it’ll just give you a bunch of good places to eat,” Vonada said. “You don’t know people’s own personal preferences with food online. It’s just some stranger’s opinion.”
The application would be more helpful in a place that you don’t know very well because most of the time people get restaurant recommendations from their friends, Vonada said.
But although this application is designed to make life easier, Vonada said she thinks that at the same time it’s making people lazier.
“One emoji won’t say as much as words will,” Vonada said.
You’ll be sure to get what you want if you type in a query versus using an emoji, Vonada said.
But businesses like Designer Greens have a different view of the new emoji edition to the Yelp application.
Emily McGuigan, an employee at Designer Greens, said the new application emoji feature might not change business at Designer Greens that much because the business has always been successful.
“The owner has two of these restaurants — one in Orlando and one in Gainesville,” McGuigan said.
The restaurants have been open for seven and five years, respectively, and both do great business, she said.
But McGuigan said she thinks that if the emoji feature lets more people know about Designer Greens, then it is a good thing.
“We’re the only salad place in town,” McGuigan said.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 4/10/2014 under the headline "Words are hard: New Yelp app lets you search with emojis"]
