Back in June, Cornichon reported that local foodie app Urbanspoon had been acquired by Zomato, a rival from India, for something like $50 million. The deal seemed to signal that a global heavyweight was getting into the space--crowd-sourced restaurant reviews--dominated by Yelp.
This morning, however, the Seattle Times is saying that Zomato appears to be pulling the plug on its US operations.
And yet, in an enigmatic email message, CEO Deepinter Goyal seemed to suggest that Zomato is merely realigning its resources in the name of efficiency: "All well Ronald - just trying to do things in a better as well as more cost effective way."
Meantime, the Zomato.com website is advertising positions in 20 countries, from Australia and New Zealand to Qatar, Turkey, Slovakia, and South Africa.
Zomato's predecessor, Urbanspoon.com, got its start in Seattle eight years ago as a restaurant directory app launched by tech entrepreneurs Ethan Lowry and Adam Doppelt. Within a couple of years they sold the business to IAC Interactive, a growing empire of crowd-sourced sites under the aegis of social-media wizard Barry Diller, and moved into more spacious quarters on Eastlake Ave.
Back to Yelp for a moment: if Zomato isn't going to compete, the field is essentially open to sites like Yelp (and, maybe, TripAdvisor). Yelp is particularly reviled--there's no better word--by the restaurant industry for its pandering to self-absorbed "reviewers" with nothing better to do than complain about cold food (or rave about mediocre dishes) and berate surly wait-staff. (See "Yelpers Are the New Mafia," published three years ago.) Last night, on Comedy Central, Cartman & Company impersonate a cohort of particularly obnoxious self-styled critics who finally get their comeuppance from a united front of restaurant owners who single out Yelpers for "special treatment"--snot and worse in their food.
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