Yelp's first mobile product, featuring trusted ratings and reviews of local businesses, optimized for Palm Treo

Aug 10, 2006 12:12 GMT  ·  By

Palm and Yelp, Inc. announced the release of Yelp Mobile (mobile.yelp.com), which has been optimized for Palm Treo smartphones.

The co-branded mobile website will provide Treo smartphone users with easy access to information that enhances their mobile-computing experience. Mirroring the local search website, Yelp Mobile, which comprises hundreds of thousands of reviews, is presented in a small digestible format that enables users to easily read what the local community is saying about a specific business. The cooperative project represents Yelp's first dedicated mobile effort and it's available on all web-enabled phones.

"Searching for local information is a vital part of the mobile experience. Working with Yelp will provide Treo owners with incredible, localized content for people on the go," said Page Murray, vice president of marketing, Palm, Inc. "Fast access to Yelp's trusted and insightful reviews will help accelerate user adoption and engagement with Treo smartphone web-based services."

"Our reviews have become an extremely powerful tool in determining which local businesses to patronize. We're very excited to work with Palm on our first mobile effort, especially since Treo smartphones really allow users to experience some of the rich media features of Yelp," said Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive officer, Yelp. "The flexibility of the Treo platform made optimizing Yelp Mobile for Treo smartphones a lot easier than we originally anticipated. Web pages load quickly, are easy to navigate and are aesthetically pleasing."

The Yelp Mobile experience allows users to either search or browse for local businesses, and more importantly, taps into the collective "local knowledge" that has been generated by the Yelp community.