“I’ve been yelping since 2005.”

When a word has been verbified, in the manner of Internet colloquialisms, it generally indicates how this word has permeated our collective common knowledge. For example, Google is a search engine, a solid noun, but when we search for things, it is common now to tell someone to “google” it; and for those who are familiar with the popular game Sudoku, people tend to ask one another, “Do you Sudoku?” This type of speech is often viewed as lazy to some, a watering-down of more appropriate usages of the English language, but one cannot deny that once a verbified word is adopted into common parlance, it indicates a huge surge in the popularity and recognition of the product or item at hand.

Yelp! was created a mere four years ago, and started off with a bang in San Francisco, now encompassing several more metropolitan centers including Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and boasting a population of over 10 million users nationwide. “Yelpers,” as the reviewers call themselves, post reviews and feedback for various consumer sources – bars, coffee, gas stations, shopping, nightlife, beauty spas, hotels, music and entertainment, education, pets, health services – but most of the reviews center on restaurants and food, the most easily relatable lifestyle foci.

The Yelp! app has a “Nearby” tab that conveniently uses your iPhone GPS feature to search for anything within your local area; as I live in Pacific Heights in San Francisco, my Nearby tab pops up several restaurants ranging from Mamacita to the Tipsy Pig, and if I click the heading “Bars,” then it shows me that I have a choice between the highly recommended Festa Wine & Cocktail Lounge, or the less liked Pagoda Café, including many in between. If I care to know what my neighbors think of our local amenities, then I can click on the “Feed” tab to present me with a list of my neighborhood users and their recent reviews. Just like the website, the Yelp! application quickly gives me all the information I need about a certain amenity, from hours to price, address and accompanying google map, not to mention the usual plethora of user reviews that result in that convincing 1-5 star award.

What really distinguishes Yelp! from other applications like UrbanSpoon is its reliance on peer-based reviews. Without the lofty critiques of Zagat and Michelin crowding out the pedestrian viewpoint, the average Joe gets his say on Yelp! and, it turns out, people are heavily persuaded by these casual word-of-mouth perspectives. Sometimes, we just want to read “this place is ****ing fantastic” instead of the eloquent but sparse New Yorker “Table for Two.”

Yelp! by Yelp, Inc., is fun, zany, and yelpingly accurate, and once you get past the seemingly low-brow, pedestrian analysis, you’ll realize that having the Yelp! app is like having your neighborhood old-timers close by to tell you where all the good and cheap eats are.