Inside Facebook

The local review-sharing site Yelp has added Facebook Connect to allow users to easily share local business reviews with their friends on Facebook.

Yelp allows anyone to submit a review for any local business, from restaurants to shoe stores to mechanics. Once you’ve registered and written a review, you’ll now have the option of using Facebook Connect to post the review to your Facebook page so your friends will see it in their feeds. You can set up an automatic posting feature to pull every review you write over to Facebook, or choose to post only certain reviews.

Facebook Connect has also recently been integrated into other review sites, such as Urbanspoon and Citysearch, and has led to a pronounced jump in activity in the number of reviews, comments, and photos added to these sites.

Citysearch has seen a dramatic increase in registrations since implementing Facebook Connect. The number of daily registrations has tripled since the launch, and 94% of reviewers are sharing their reviews on Facebook. The average review gets 40 views, with 74% of those clicking back to the Citysearch site. Restaurant review site Urbanspoon has experienced similar success. Since adding Facebook Connect in March, 1/3 of the users signing in to the site with their popular iPhone app are doing so through Facebook.

As more review sites add Facebook Connect functinality, Facebook itself is becoming a valuable source for unsolicited, trusted information on local businesses and services. Seeing your friends’ Yelp posts is a great way to learn more about restaurants, stores, and night life around your area. The early success suggests that users are taking advantage of these reviews, and with several different sites, like Urbanspoon and Yelp, integrating with Facebook, you’ll get a larger number of reviews that will allow you to make a more informaed decision on where to spend your money.

The increased use of Facebook Connect also brings more accountability to the restaurants, stores, and shops; any one customer can now more easily spread the good (or bad) word about your business throughout their entire network of friends, so there’s more incentive to offer a good product and excellent customer service.